Personal essays
On telling the truth in a non-truthful way.
Stretching the truth
A little more than forty years ago, the superintendent of the Cleveland City Schools wrote a letter complaining about the petty politics he was forced to deal with. He then drove himself to Cleveland Aviation High School at Burke Lakefront Airport and killed himself with a single gunshot.
I was working in radio as the morning newscaster and had just gotten home and had the television going in the background.
I wandered into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and heard a bulletin interrupt the broadcast. I carried my mug into the living room and watched the story about the superintendent’s suicide. I flipped to another channel and grabbed a pen and a notepad and watched the bulletin on another channel. By the time I’d watched the third bulletin on the story I had most of the known facts jotted down.
I was the only news person at my station. Usually, we only did news between 6 and 9 am but this was an important local item. I wrote a quick thirty minute story and called the program director to tell him what I had. Ten minutes later I was on the air.
I tell you all that to tell you what I said at the end of the story. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately because it was completely truthful but I knew it was misleading.
I finished the story and tagged it with my name, “live with what’s happening at Burke Lakefront Airport.”
That was completely true.
But listeners would assume that I was live at the airport.
I hadn’t said that, but adding that phrase painted that picture for them.
More truths
Imagine that we’re out somewhere for a pint of beer or a glass of wine.
“Hang on a minute,” I say, and take an antibiotic that I’ve been prescribed for some condition I’ve been diagnosed with.
We start to argue about something stupid. Maybe it’s sports, politics, or who the best Muppet is.
The conversation gets a little loud and an off-duty police officer who is working as security wanders over to check on us. He determines it’s a friendly discussion but asks us to keep it down.
And then years later I run for office.
An ad is run against me. The most unflattering picture of all is displayed on the screen. I look angry. My skin has an odd color to it. Behind me is what looks to be a typewritten police report with some words highlighted.
The narrator says - over scary music of course - “Drinking, Drugs, Questioned by a Police Officer for a public disturbance” as the words “Drinking”, “Drugs”, “Investigated” appear in big banners on the screen.
None of that is a lie but it deliberately paints a dishonest picture.
This is what political ads have become in my country. And they run continuously from July to November.
This is actually from a real ad running. The story is that someone called the police to report a domestic dispute.
When the police got there, the candidate and spouse had been arguing about the candidate’s long work hours. The police determined that it was a verbal dispute and there was no evidence of physical violence. Oh, and both had been drinking and the candidate had taken prescription medicine.
The banner on the ad about the incident reads, “Drinking”, “Drugs”, and “Insufficient Medical Knowledge”.
Insufficient Medical Knowledge? I’ll get to that.
There may be real reasons not to vote for this person - I’d love a negative ad that focused on that. Actually, I’d love a positive ad that focuses on why your candidate is a better choice.
Unfortunately, these negative ads work.
They say
Have you ever driven behind a truck that has a bumper sticker that says “How’s my driving” accompanied by a phone number?
No one calls to say, “I was behind truck CL-487 and they were a great driver.”
People call to say that this truck cut them off or something.
Until recently with the advent of dashboard cameras there was no way for the truck driver to prove otherwise.
People complain when they think they’ve been wronged even when they were at fault.
I had a friend who was quite a bit older than me. When he was in his eighties, someone mistook him for someone else and came up and punched him. He went to the doctor where they discovered a condition that had gone undetected for years, fixed it, and likely saved his life.
Had the previous doctors been negligent for missing this? Maybe. But he’d never complained of this condition and medicine is an art that depends on a lot of factors. He was grateful they’d caught and addressed it.
Someone else might have written a complaint to the medical board. The medical board would then evaluate whether or not the previous doctors had been negligent. A complaint - even with an underlying issue - does not mean the doctor’s did anything wrong.
So back to our candidate. The first part of the ad says that their “medical knowledge was described as insufficient to Ohio’s Medical Board.”
That’s me “Live with what’s happening at the airport.”
You’re supposed to hear that phrase and think, the candidate’s medical knowledge was described as insufficient BY Ohio’s Medical Board. But the ad says “TO” and not “BY”.
But just in case you came to the correct conclusion, the ad comes back to it at the end with “Drinking”, “Drugs”, and “Insufficient Medical Knowledge”.
Forty years ago I feel badly for the misleading statement I made because I knew when I wrote it that it was truthful but misleading. In addition, the lie I told had nothing to do with the story I was telling.
I have a feeling the folks who wrote and produced this ad don’t think twice about it. They sleep just fine.
This ad and these people are telling a lie to influence our vote. This is the sort of lie that, as the quote goes, “travels halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes.”
Hopefully, this is one of those shoes that will help you view these ads differently.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 332. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe