A life more exciting
Senator Hillary Clinton’s blatant lie that she had to contend with sniper fire or the threat of sniper fire when she landed Tusla in Bosnia in 1996 could be seen as an example of her rotten, devilish, say-anything, no-good soul. That’s not how I think of the Senator, and I that’s not what I think the episode tells us. No, I think her lie more serves as an example of how many of us don’t have any particularly exciting stories to tell. So we embellish the meager stories we do have.
My personal whopper is the story of how I saved a dog from drowning. I did actually save the dog from something - mental stress and physical discomfort at minimum - but death probably wasn’t it. Harm and injury? Sure. But death? Probably only if the dog didn’t know how to swim or if its collar had strangled it (which, granted, could have happened, but probably wouldn’t have). But still, even if you allow for the possibility that the dog had died had I not come to its aid, it’s not that much of a story, is it? It doesn’t exactly make me a Raoul Wallenberg or Carl Gustav von Rosen, does it? Yet, that’s the story I’ve got and I swear to God I’ll use if I ever run for office (”What a cute puppy you’ve brought to my campaign rally! I once saved…”).
When asked to examplify the violent environment Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick grew up in in South Side Chicago he responded that a gang member once tossed a soda can at his head. That’s the kind of story you’d expect a kid from Concord to tell in an earnest effort to relate to the hardships of growing in South Side Chicago. I’m guessing the Governor will recall a few more exciting stories in his book, scheduled for release in 2010.
It’s not surprising that police officers, firefighters and combat veterans usually have the most exciting stories to tell. A friend of mine served in the Vietnam War. His armored unit ran into an ambush in Cambodia. It was wild scene. RPGs disabling the tanks, machinegun fire cutting up crew members as they were trying to drag wounded soldiers to safety. I’m sure it looked like a war zone, as people are apt say when they describe a burnt-out apartment building.
Few people have experiences like that to talk about. So we embellish. Of course, what is more common is that people embellish the packaging of a story. They might for example say “I once saved a dog from drowning” but when they they tell the story its filled with excitement-dampening qualifiers.
Senator Clinton’s story was a bit egregious in that she didn’t just embellish the characterization or context of her story but also almost all of its contents, which is a bit worse than merely hyping it. But what the heck, when you’re out campaigning, speaking and speaking and speaking, you’re bound to screw up one way or another, either by sticking to the script or straying from it. Back in my days of political activism I was told the story of a fellow party member who’d fallen into delivering his stump speech of talking about the importance of freedom to choose where to live. Only he delivered the speech in a prison, addressing inmates. Which reminds me of the time I rode in the back of a police car in Washington, D.C., looking for a burglar…
