Pants on Fire

I’m going to have to revisit the “Smokey and the Bandit” movies.  I think there’s a line in there about “I’m going home and smack your momma”…  That’s how I’m feeling right about now.  My mother set me up for failure, she didn’t teach me how the world really works.  She taught me a bunch of idealistic crap like, patriotism, equality, honesty, hard work and honor.  What a chump I was to believe it…

Okay, turning the sarcasm down for now…

Back when Bill Clinton got in trouble with the intern, I didn’t care at all.  The private sexual actions of a man barely concerns me.  Until he lied about it while under oath.  I thought that was one of the worst things he could have done.  I’m not an adherent to either political party, I distrust them equally but when it was discussed, I thought he should get into trouble for lying.  And everyone told me to stop being so upset, stop witch-hunting the President.  “Of course he lied, you would too.”  No, not true.  I might lie, I’d do whatever it took to save my marriage, deny the intern, whatever… up until the point that I was sworn under oath.  Once I was sworn in, I’d have to come clean.  Completely.  You just can’t lie in court.

That’s another one of those idyllic concepts my mother drove into my head.  No matter how embarrassing, no matter how incriminating, you can’t lie in court.  You tell the truth or you plead the 5th.  Some of you would just LOVE to get me on the stand and ask some of those uncomfortable questions to see just how honest I’d be…  Unfortunately for me, I’d be brutally honest.  I’d spill every dirty little secret.  Years ago, a man I love had some trouble and got pulled into court for it.  I was called to give a statement and as much as I knew it would hurt him, as much as I wanted to lie to protect him, I couldn’t.  I told the truth.  Since childhood, my brain has always known that lying under oath is very, very bad.

So you people ridiculed me and said that I had my priorities out of whack (and some of you even went so far as to call me a liar) because I said I would be honest about marital infidelity if questioned in court.  Time has gone by, the issue is forgotten and now we have Roger Clemens facing thirty years because he lied under oath.  And a lot of you people are saying we should crucify this guy.  Many of you are the same people that said I was wrong for thinking we should crucify Clinton!

One of these two cases involved the most powerful man on the planet compromising himself and disregarding the very system of government he represented, the other case involves a baseball player using drugs…  If you’re going to make allowances for the severity of the situation, doesn’t it seem to you that the public has them backward?  I don’t care if Bill had some fun time in the oval orifice, that’s between him and Hillary.  I don’t care if Roger shot horse tranquilizer into his nutsack, that’s between him and his team/fans.  I don’t care.  But someone did.  And they cared enough to bring them both into court over it.  And once they were in court, they are compelled to tell the truth.

I say nail them both.  I don’t believe in any gradient for the crime of perjury.  This is a black and white offense.  You did or you didn’t LIE.  It makes no difference to me whether you are lying about plugging an intern with a cigar, where you were the night of the murder or the spelling of your middle name.  Perjury is a tool to keep people honest and let the rest of the court system work.  The punishment should be severe enough to keep people from slipping into some self-preservational dishonesty.  The system is imperfect but it completely breaks down if we don’t all follow and enforce the rules we have put into place to hold the system together.  Rules and regulations are there for a reason.  Either enforce them or abolish them.

That’s twice now that my mom has been wrong…  Last week I found out that I should judge a man by the color of his skin and this week I found out that lying under oath is alright under popular circumstances.  Soon they’ll try to tell me that hard work doesn’t count as much as kissing the right butts at work…