Lying doesn't carry the same stigma anymore.

[SeattleUte]

Opra says that she doesn't care that James Frey's purported memoir "Million Little Pieces" turns out to be fictional (after she singlehandedly raised him from obscurity and made him a millionaire). She says it's still a good, inspirational story.

Today on NPR I heard that here in Washington the Republican party has admitted it sent fictional post cards falsely notifying people living in areas represented by democrat legislators that sex offenders lived nearby to make people angry about their democrat representative being "soft" on crime. The Republicans are not repentant, saying thay had to do this as a last resort, and it is working--the democrats are toughening up on crime.

It used to be that lying was just considered bad, and the stuff of bad karma, regardless of the purported end. Oh well. I have a feeling this fixation on truth being a laudable end in and of itself was just a passing late twentieth century American fad.