Fern and Joe: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
...and nothing but the truth
Fern: I can’t stop reading about George Santos: a check-stealing, volley-ball champion from a college he never went to; a Goldman Sach’s faux-financing drag queen who scammed an animal rescue charity.
JOE: The story becomes even more complicated because Santos is being used as a tool by Republicans to further their agendas. Most of them are keeping quiet about what should be done about George Santos. McCarthy is unusually evasive about this.
Fern: They need his vote. But Santos is more than someone who just puffed up a resume. He is someone who is not well.
Joe: I knew a guy once who couldn’t help lying. And I remember the moment I realized this: that he could not stop himself from lying. About even small things. Then wild stories. We were sitting across from one another in a restaurant booth, and he was telling me about how he chased a burglar with a gun. He was a hero in the actual telling. I didn’t say anything, but I suddenly knew, just knew, that he wasn’t being truthful. And sensed that he knew I knew and he desperately needed me to play along. I didn’t call him on it and I remember feeling oddly complicit in his lie.
Fern: What happened to him?
Joe: His marriage broke up. Eventually he went into treatment to deal with habitual lying. He learned that he never thought very highly of the person he saw in the mirror, and instead of doing the hard work of changing what he’d seen, he kept changing the mirror.
Fern: Well, let’s talk about lying.
Joe: Everyone sometimes lies. Just to be polite. Yes?
Fern: Not that I’m above reproach. But I’m not so good at the little white-lie. Especially if someone asks me something directly. Years ago I was shopping with a friend and she asked my opinion about a dress she liked and was going to buy. I said the one word that changed her mind when she asked me how she looked in it.
Joe: What was the word?
Fern: Matronly.
Joe: Fern:!!!
Fern: Well, she asked what I thought!
Joe: You could have softened that a bit.
Fern: How?
Joe: I don’t know. You could have told her that she looked “professional.”
Fern: I know when you say things that aren’t true. Like you say that the food is always delicious when we’re at someone’s house.
Joe: I don’t want to hurt the cook’s feelings.
Fern: But you don’t have to have seconds!
Joe: So I’m a bit of a pleaser. And you don’t have to be honest to a fault. Like that time at the steak house, you asked me how my meal was, and I said good, except the mashed potatoes were a little gluey. Just then the server comes by, asks about our meals. I tell her delicious. I mean, the server wasn’t really asking, she was only being courteous as she passed by our table. It was late, the place was closing down for the day, the woman was probably exhausted. But you call after her: “The potatoes were gluey!” A small dose of pleasing wouldn’t have hurt.
Fern: Well, I’m pleased that you never lie to me about the big stuff. My first husband wasn’t so good about that.
I guess I am uncomfortable lying about the little things. Even with kids. Maybe because of the iconoclastic family I grew up in. I was always told the truth.
Joe: I’m glad that our grandson didn’t ask you this year about Santa Claus.
Fern: Or last week, about the tooth fairy.
Joe: Could we take this conversation to a higher plane? Everybody lies sometimes. Some in fact think it’s impossible to tell the truth. That language itself fails us. The playwright Samuel Beckett wrote: We have two choices: to lie or keep silent.
Fern: That sounds like writer-talk. And it also sounds like bull-shit.
Joe: Well, writers do lie. Certainly you never told the whole truth in the books that you wrote.
Fern: In novels there’s a different kind of truth. And even in nonfiction, writers need to “shape” the stories we tell. No, what I’m talking about is intentional fabrication for personal gain
.Joe: In politics, Santos is an extreme example, but the Trump years found all of us in constant spin. Alternate truths—remember Kellyanne? These “alternate” truths reframed honesty and reality itself. We often forgive politicians who skirt the truth by evasion or omission. But Trump was beyond anything we’d ever seen.
Fern: From the size of the crowd at his inauguration. To how he was going to share his tax returns as soon as the audits were completed. His denial that he paid hush money to a porn star. Even though his personal lawyer and accountant served jail time! He told the country at the very beginning of the pandemic how Covid was totally under control, even “disappearing.” The New York Times used to list Pinnochio’s for the lies that Trump told. After a while, no one could keep up.
Joe: And of course Trump’s biggest whopper: That he won the last presidential election. When he was elected I thought how much damage could he do in four years. But my God. His constant lies did real damage. People died of Covid.
Fern: And people are doing jail time because they believed the lies of a stolen election.
Joe: Lies undermine reality. What’s real? It’s harder to know today than before Trump. We’ve become a nation that lies to its people and to itself. I remember in high school remarking at the irony of Russia’s primary newspaper being called Pravda: The Truth. The truth is a powerful weapon if you’re lying. Every good liar knows that. Ask the founder of Truth Social.
Fern: Every time Trump told a whopper, I thought: ok, this is it. Now it’s over. People aren’t going to stand for this one. And it wasn’t over.
So perhaps it shouldn’t seem so unusual that Santos is resolute about keeping his congressional seat. Or that most Republicans are keeping quiet.
Joe: As of this writing, anyway.
Iowa Writers’ Collaborative Columnists
Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights
Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll
Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines
Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake
Suzanna de Baca Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley
Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County
Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji
Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames
Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines
Nik Heftman, The Seven Times, Iowa and California
Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla
Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines
Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo
Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames
Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey
Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa
Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar
Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines
Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines
John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines
Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines
Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.
Macy Spensley, The Creative Midwesterner, Davenport/Des Moines
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona
Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County
Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport
Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines
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