Lying: no big deal?; Sharon’s generation

In Friday’s RNS report Andrea Simakis questions if lying has become acceptable, judging by reactions to incidents such as author James Frey’s embellishments, Martha Stewart’s stock dumping and Bill Clinton’s activities with Monica Lewinsky: It’s official. Fibbing is OK if it serves a higher purpose. Oprah said so. The queen of all media tossed this […]

In Friday’s RNS report Andrea Simakis questions if lying has become acceptable, judging by reactions to incidents such as author James Frey’s embellishments, Martha Stewart’s stock dumping and Bill Clinton’s activities with Monica Lewinsky: It’s official. Fibbing is OK if it serves a higher purpose. Oprah said so. The queen of all media tossed this ethical grenade recently when she called CNN’s Larry King to defend his guest, James Frey, author of mega-bestseller “A Million Little Pieces.” Frey’s memoir of addiction and recovery was featured on her show when it was anointed the October selection of the world’s most powerful book club. The champagne went flat Jan. 8 when a Web site posted a story that showed how Frey had embellished and, in some cases, fabricated significant events in the vomit-stained account of his life. Yet it appears plenty of Americans agree with Oprah. So when did public lying become a resume booster rather than the end of a career? Are we so used to being duped that over time, our outrage muscles have gone all slack and gooey?

Israel’s fighting pioneers, contemporaries of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s, watch an era fade as Sharon lies in the hospital after a stroke. Joshua Mitnick reports from Tel Aviv, Israel: On most afternoons, the veterans from Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 can be found around a table at a cafe in central Tel Aviv. They are contemporaries of Ariel Sharon, the lionized Israeli prime minister who recently suffered a massive stroke. For them, the likely end of Sharon’s political career also signals something of a swan song for their generation-a group that came to Israel in the shadow of two world wars and then fought for the country’s survival. Wrinkled and hard of hearing, they can be curt at the approach of a stranger. But when asked about their past, they pull out plastic health care cards identifying them as former members of the Palmach, the military division of the largest Jewish underground in pre-state Palestine.

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