In the old cliché that there are only two certainties in life — death and taxes — lies a sad, hidden message: honesty is not one of life’s certainties. Often, low-mileage used cars weren’t really driven by little old ladies to Sabbath services and back. And when cologne and perfume manufacturers suggest that their fragrances will make one more attractive and certain clothing lines will make one look slimmer, too often they don’t. But that’s advertising and so no harm done.

Even when the Mars Company announced that one of the M&M candy colors would be discontinued and they polled the public for a replacement color; we recognize that as just a publicity stunt. But when people who have gained the respect and admiration of the masses outright lie, that’s simply inexcusable.

Two of the biggest cases in point are the unrelated alleged scandals involving Martha Stewart and certain American Catholic Bishops, such as Boston’s Cardinal Law. When the queen of domesticity allegedly got involved in some insider trading, the stock price of her mega-company plummeted. And while technically Stewart suffered as a result too, it was other shareholders, the millions of MS aficionados and wannabes around the country who were the real victims, losing life savings and retirement security.

Media helped bring scandals to attention of the public
We certainly wouldn’t have heard so much about these scandals if the media hadn’t had such a field day with them. If there were more important happenings going on, like a war, we definitely wouldn’t have gotten daily updates. Yet the media didn’t fabricate these issues, although with the case of the Catholic Church in Boston, it’s been pretty much confirmed that the Boston Globe was more interested in embarrassing, vilifying and attempting to destroy rather than merely finding out the facts. That’s equally reprehensible. But this is one case where Church leaders knew that eventually their actions could become public, and so a crisis management plan should have been devised long ago. As a result of their lack of forthrightness, countless men and women have lost faith in an institution they once held dear. Regaining that trust may take a miracle.

Admitting the truth should not be a sin. Practicing deception should be. Years ago, Hizonor New York Mayor Ed Koch appeared on a Sunday morning news forum to discuss the expensive but failing bicycle paths the City installed in hopes of keeping cyclists and motorists safely apart. Millions of dollars later when it was discovered that the paths went unused, the City decided to remove them. The Mayor, sitting in the hot seat, knew that he had some explaining to do.

The conversation that morning went something like this. “Mr. Mayor, the bicycle paths are being removed after spending lots of taxpayers money to put them in. What have you got to say about it?”

Koch replied, “It was a dumb idea, it failed, we screwed up.” The mayor, by fessing up, left the interview with 29 minutes remaining in the program. And he went on to win several additional terms in office, screw-up not-withstanding.

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