ADIOS ALBERTO

I hardly ever lie, and with good cause. I’m a lousy liar – always have been.

About midway through my second year of college – this is just after electric lighting became standard on most campuses – my roommate and I were accused by the Drama Department’s resident geek of smoking pot. It was totally true, of course, but it was also a felony offense and we were loath to admit it. So we constructed an elaborate lie, the essence of which was that we had purposely deceived this geek into “thinking” we were smoking pot, you know, just to torture him. The whole case came down to a he said/she said kind of deal, and hey, he was a geek, so we were gold.

But in the end I folded. Sitting across from the head of the department I just couldn’t lie – not because I was any better than my roommate but because I was convinced I would be caught. It looked to me like telling the truth and accepting the consequences was better than lying, getting caught, and accepting worse consequences.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales walked into the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning looking like a Tostado Grande. By the time the lunch break finally rolled around he had been reduced to a small plate of beans and rice. His major problem wasn’t so much being a liar, which it certainly appeared he was, it was being a bad lair. He had no credible explanation for glaring contradictions between his testimony and the testimony of his chief of staff. As Senator Schummer pointed out, either Gonzales was lying about no knowing what his chief of staff was up to, or he was totally inept. Either way he should be replaced.

Lying rarely pays off. But if you’re gonna do it you should at least do it well.

a foot on either side