While its appearance at the height of the Brian Williams serial tall-tales scandal seems coincidental, a New York Times Sunday review column by Clancy Martin, a "professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City" who has been "married twice before" (!), reveals quite a bit about the kind of dreck the Old Gray Lady will tolerate in the name of advancing its personal values-free, anything-goes take on the world.
Clancy goes through a tired, predictable "everybody lies in their relationships" exercise, apparently unable to distinguish between good manners, motivational statements, and flat-out factual falsehoods. After the jump readers will see a list of statements the author treats as "lies" which definitely are not in many if not most circumstances. I have applied some of them to more generalized or current circumstances.
Here we go:
"Relationships last only if we don’t always say exactly what we’re thinking." Not saying exactly what you're thinking isn't lying. It's (I really need to write this?) not saying exactly what you're thinking.
"We have to disguise our feelings, to feint, to smile sometimes when we want to shout. In short, we have to lie." So I guess Kanye West would have been "lying" if he had kept his whining that Beyoncé should have won the Grammy for Album of the Year to himself. Following Clancy's illogic, he is therefore a paragon of virtuous honesty for going on an extended rant insisting that Beck, the artist who won, did not deserve it and should give up the award. No, Mr. Clancy. Kanye would have been exhibiting good manners, and he would have spared us the sickening spectacle of a sore loser doing everything he can to ruin the winners' special moment for the second time in six years.
"Think of the dozens of lies you tell your children (or your parents told you) in order to help them believe in themselves: 'You can be whatever you want to be'” (Sorry pal, at least for time being in America, that's true in most circumstances, as long as you add, "if you recognize your unique talents and develop them"). “Life gets easier.” (It often does, and on the whole, objectively measured, compared to 50 and 100 years ago, it most certainly has.)
“Other kids are jealous because you’re smart.” Sad, and often true — or has Mr. Clancy never heard of the "acting white" smear black kids direct at their peers who try to educate themselves?
"These lies of love allow us to make it from one day to the next. 'You’re the most beautiful woman in the room.' 'You’re the only man who’s ever understood me.'” How in the world are those two statements automatically lies?
"Some days saying 'I love you' doesn’t feel honest at all, but it expresses a deeper truth that is necessary for the love to be sustained." In other words, you dingaling, the statement isn't a lie at all. (Gosh, seeing garbage like this is painful, and rest assured that's the truth.)
Note the one thing Clancy didn't explore: Making statements which are clearly false in the face of cold, hard facts.
Of course not. Those are the kinds of lies the Times and the leftist press constantly excuse — but only when they come from leftists and favored colleagues in the media.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
