No Matter How You Slice It, The Cake Tastes The Same

What you call a lie doesn't make it any less a lie. You may nice it down by referring to it as a falsehood, fib, tall tale, misstatement, fabrication, or any of a myriad of euphemisms, but a lie is still a lie.

You may attempt to camoflage it, as Jay Ambrose did in his Viewpoints piece that appeared in the September 12th edition of The Baltimore Examiner. Regarding Sarah Palin's deceptiveness about her handing of the so-called 'bridge to nowhere' Ambrose came to the defense of her honor by categorizing the public's criticism as one of the "slaps at Palin [that] are too many to enumerate." He sarcastically termed widespread public opinion as a "supposedly shocking revelation that she favored the 'bridge to nowhere' before rejecting it, as if public officials never change their view as they learn more."

I don't presume to speak for everyone who has been critical of Palin's claims regarding the bridge, but as for this voter, I don't care one way or the other how many times she may "change her view" about the bridge or any other issue. What I do care deeply about is that she lied about it. She portrayed herself as a noble defender of the taxpayers' interest by bragging about how she told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks" and insinuated that she had taken some brave stance against Congressional waste and porkbarrel spending. She repeated this pretense many times after the original version was dispersed in her GOP convention speech -- pretty much every chance she got to speak into a microphone.

The truth is that she dropped the idea only after it was already dead and only after Congress had already removed the earmark. Her "change of view" came about only when her view became a political liability. Judging the facts of the case, I believe that was the sole reason for her "change of view" -- that it was simply borne of political self-preservation, and not from a single iota of noble cause.

To have political candidates attempting to spoonfeed lies to the voters is hard enough to swallow (yes, pun intended) but to have journalists try to convince us that the candidates' motives aren't what they are is enough to make one puke.