The Big DumpTruck

It's all about lies this week, isn't it? Arlen Spector lies about receiving Ted Kennedy's letter, Alito lies about knowing he was a member of CAP at Princeton. (Dude, don't put anything on your resume that you may not want to come up in the future. And don't join an organization without at least checking to see if the prime directive is bigoted. Okay?) And then we have my favorite, the fray about James Frey. Oprah's pal couldn't sell his book as fiction so he called it non-fiction and made a kazillion dollars.

It occurs to me that there are plenty of things I could say in print that any number of people could probably refute. And if I got a lot of money and fame from saying it, you'd bet they would. If I said that I was once the Mayor of Leominster, I'm sure people would jump up and say something. They'd be wrong, because I was once Mayor of Leominster, but they'd still jump up and down. (See, I won an essay contest to be Mayor for a Day in high school. I was also the chief of police for a day, and the vice principal for a day. Man, I should have entered some REAL essay contests with that track record). But I have the certificate somewhere that says I was mayor, and there is probably some written record at city hall or the high school.

So you need to know that the book I'm writing, the one that you're all going to buy? It's going to be non-fiction. But it's not 100% true and I would never say it was. There will be some fiction in it. I will be proud of that fiction. This is not going to be my biography, because I'm just not that interesting. And apparently, neither was Mr. Frey.