Little White Lies

I'm wondering how it would have gone for George W. Bush had a bunch of friendly reporter types revealed that he had embellished some facts and made others up out of whole cloth, in writing his autobiography.

You may not have heard, but respected author David Mariness, has written a book about Barrack Obama and revealed just such liberties with the truth. There are no dead bodies or juicy scandals to see, just little white lies that were designed to boost BHO's image. I mean these are REALLY little ones, about the most inconsequential details. But that is what makes them so telling. One example is a story where BHO says he was racially ostracized along with another black student. Only the student in question was half Japanese, not black, and neither of them were harassed racially. And he told of a "big fight" he had with a white girlfriend over racial attitudes, after she had seen a play with racial themes. Except that she never saw the play and they never had the fight. Then there was the high school basketball coach who didn't start Obama because he, Obama, played "black." Ok, this one made me laugh. Have you ever seen BHO on the basketball court? If there was only one word to describe his game, that word would be "white." He's not the worst player I've ever seen, but he'll never be confused with Jason Williams (aka, White Chocolate, and a guy who really does play "black.)

But notice the pattern. He's just trying to certify his street cred with the homeys that he never hung out with. All the lies are about how he had an authentic "black" experience growing up in a white world. After all, he had to explain how he got into Columbia and Harvard, and it just won't do to suggest that it was because of how white he acted and spoke.

But back to my first thought. How would the press have treated it had we learned that George W. Bush had fabricated a story about how he had done something admirable? Say he claimed to have saved the life of a drowning fellow Boy Scout, but then we learn that he was never in the Boy Scouts. I have a feeling it would be deemed the final arbiter on the issue of the content of his character, don't you?