DEFINITELY BORN AT THE WRONG TIME

Yeah, he's back at it again - but, not for long.

I've already covered the subject of honesty too many times and doubt I even dented the consciousness of many.

Regardless, I just decided it was time for another update.

So, why is honesty such a hot topic to me? It's not as if I have always been honest. There were more times than I care to acknowledge where I may have taken the easy way out.

My rationale was that I didn't want to hurt feelings. In retrospect, maybe I just didn't want to take on the consequences of telling the truth.

Now, that I've started my self-cleansing - I would offer also that I am not unique in my implication of past dishonesty. But, I'm not suggesting - as so many of those generations that followed - that "everybody else is doing it so, what's the problem?"

Quite the contrary.

Some cynics say, the problem goes back to 1848 when an unidentified yahoo- nut declared he found gold in California and everybody and his brother headed west. The problem is that many were young enough to beget offspring - and California has been our problem ever since.

I know the lies about gold were often untrue - because the Lone Ranger warned me of the problems with iron pyrites -fools gold - during his 3 nights a week programming on our local Mutual radio broadcasting station. The Horace Greeley guys had to learn the hard way.

The "fools gold' led us to "fools talk" - "fools opinions"- and "fools expertise." It also brought us one helluva lot of right brained people in entertainment who didn't have a clue what they were talking about.

Still we listened - and along the way decided to call some of them politicians and/or worthy humanitarians.

We shouldn't have elimiminated the entertainment writers in our search for "fools gold". Today, more than ever, we are seeing an increasing numbers of writers/authors who are playing with our heads much more than Freud or even Ayn Rand ever intended.

It seems the latest is Greg Mortenson, climber/author, who is accused of "gross dishonesty" writing. He is among the latest to be accused of fabricating the truth and deception of the readers.

The most recent expose is his fabrication of several points made in his popular memoir, "Three Cups of Tea."

The Sunday night show 60 minutes is the latest to attempt to spill his tea - which is a little like the story of the pot calling the kettle black.

It is doubtful there has ever been any news organization since Hearst more frequently accused of editing interviews and stories for the purpose of selling something that's not strictly the truth.

To give Mortenson - the celebrated humanitarian - 'credit' for his work in building(?) schools in Afghanistan - he is creative - if nothing else.

When confronted with a well researched conclusion that his allegation he stumbled into the Afghanistan village of Korphe, following his failed attempt to reach the summit of K2 - and was confronted by a native girl asking him to help build a school after being nursed back to health by the villagers, was an out and out lie - he still had chutspah.

When accused of these implicit lies in his book which led to the outpouring of money and prayer and a charity that has raised $60 million - he shrugged his literary licensed shoulders by simply saying, "the book compressed events to simplify the storytelling."

This is besides the fact that his telling of his epiphany and the relating of his gradiose behavior by building schools in response to the alleged life saving actions of the villagers was probably the catalyst for the books success. Ordinary people were influenced to support his avowed mission in life.

However, one of his supporters was not "ordinary" and supported the mission to the tune of 75 big ones. He is now releasing his own 75 page expose of Mortenson - apparently one page for every grand he shelled out.

Of the roughly 141 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan claimed by Mortenson, an inspection of 30 of them found " roughly half were empty, built by someone else, or not receiving support at all."

Perhaps, it was they who opted to "compress" his numbers.

There is good reason that the state of Oregon as well as several others wants a close bookkeeping report made of so-called charities -and tax privileges rescinded for many of those charities where sometimes 70% of the money goes for non-charitable causes.

This is a growing concern in our country. We're being hoodwinked.

I do again want to cite Mortenson's "compression" excuse as somewhat unique despite it's contribution as just one more stone along the path of degradation our celebrities and politicians have chosen to follow.

No longer is "I am not a crook" and "I never had sex with that woman" the top contenders for the leading boldfaced lie of the past 50 years. One of my favorites, and seeming to gather favor, remains, "I must have mispoke."

So, why do I continue to bring up dishonesty as this Achilles heel in our society today?

My fear is that if we continue to hear this crap and not react we will become like the robots in Germany prior and during during WW II.

If we refuse to examine the trending increase of lies we're hearing-can we not just as easily become an accomplice - as they did - to one of the great human disasters of all times?

The politicians are telling the lies - but, we're allowing them to do it.

The German people weren't stupid people either. They just heard the same lies repeated so frequently - that they allowed themselves to become enured to the truth - and I'm scared to death we're doing the same. We're becoming a nation of turtles.

I love this country too much to not want to be one of the ever growing number of people who are starting to say, "Enough! Enough!"

And yeah, maybe I was born at the wrong time - but, I'm still hanging in there.