SwiftVets.com

[Jefe]

Why would John Kerry add a lie to his story about something so minor as his admitted “inarticulate moment”. Why not just leave it at that? Who among us hasn’t had one of those moments.
This got me thinking about Safire’s comment on Hillary about pathological lying.
Wait until you read the following:

http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/story1a062501.html

High Achievers Who Lie: Why Do They Do It?
By MARK O'KEEFE
c.2001 Newhouse News Service

They don't need to lie but they do, fibbing and faking to look and feel good -- until they're caught. Then they fall, sometimes hard.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis, recently caught in a web of lies about his role in the Vietnam War, is the latest example of a high-profile, high-achieving person who seemed to have little to gain and everything to lose by lying, but did it anyway.

Dr. Charles Ford, a psychiatrist, professor and author of "Lies! Lies!! Lies!!!: The Psychology of Deceit," said such people often have a disorder called "pseudologia fantastica," or pathological lying. It is the affliction of "a person who lies when the truth would serve him better," he said.

Ford has never met Ellis, the Mount Holyoke College professor who falsely claimed to students and in interviews that he fought in the Vietnam War and later protested it. But Ford said Ellis "fits the pattern I've seen with a lot of men," and some women.

"In my opinion, and I think it's fairly consistent with other psychiatrists who have studied this phenomenon, these individuals have an inherent lack of self-esteem," said Ford, professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's school of medicine.

"Despite achieving some success, they don't really believe in their hearts that they're worth very much. They always have to exaggerate in an attempt to be the center of attention, to have people admire them, to feel good about themselves."

Before he was exposed by the Boston Globe June 18, Ellis enjoyed the view from the top of the literary and academic world. He won the Pulitzer in April for his book "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation."

He basked in acclaim for "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson," which won the 1997 National Book Award in non-fiction. He had become an academic celebrity as a frequently quoted expert in the controversy over whether Jefferson had a sexual relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. Ellis' conclusion, in a cover story he wrote for U.S. News & World Report, was that Jefferson and Hemings were lovers "beyond any reasonable doubt" -- though other experts still contest the point.
Ellis taught one of Mount Holyoke's most popular courses, Vietnam and American Culture. He captivated students at the South Hadley, Mass., women's school with moving stories about his experiences in the war and then the anti-war movement.

But as the Boston Globe revealed, Ellis never served in Vietnam and there is no evidence he protested it later. In an interview with the Globe last year, Ellis went into detail about his service, saying he went to Vietnam in 1965 as a platoon leader and paratrooper with the Army's famed 101st Airborne Division. When the newspaper checked out the claims, they were bogus. Mount Holyoke initially defended Ellis as a man of the highest integrity, but launched an investigation after Ellis admitted to and apologized for the "distortions."

The scandal has shocked the academic world. "How could someone, a scholar of such renown, take a chance like this, damaging his integrity?" said Evelin Sullivan, who has a doctorate in literature and is the author of "The Concise Book of Lying," to be published in August.

"It's not like he's a surf bum or something. Usually people who lie do have something to gain from it."

Not so with pathological or habitual liars.

"Why do people do this?" said Dr. Alan Hilfer, a psychologist at Maimonides Medical Center in New York. "Largely they do it because they're under a tremendous amount of pressure and they're worried about losing their job or are fearful of looking inadequate in front of their colleagues.

"There must have been a real sense of inadequacy about him to make him feel that he had to embellish his background with this fictional history. He worked hard to make himself to appear to be a very important person because he didn't feel he was a very important person.

"That all goes back to more basic primitive stuff, how he saw himself as he was being raised, messages he got while growing up, that type of thing."

Ford has written that in one out of three cases, some brain dysfunction affects pathological liars. Such liars are often smooth-talking narcissists, "so self-centered they often think they can construct a reality," he said.

In many instances, the lying gets worse as the liar gets more power.

They seem normal, Ford said. "But they get a little power and they lie all the time. The expression used to be that his head got bigger than his hat. It's the idea that if I believe it, all of you will, too."

When women lie this way, Ford said, it's usually "to make them seem more important in interpersonal relationships." He said a common lie on female resumes is that they were president of their college sorority.
Men who lie almost always do it in ways that make them appear more macho, Ford said. The most common exaggerations are about military service and sports exploits.
The Globe said Ellis told a reporter he was a running back in high school and scored the winning touchdown in the last game of his senior year. The newspaper checked and found he wasn't even on the football team.

While that might seem relatively harmless, lies about fighting in Vietnam are like sacrilege to those who really served there, said Vietnam veteran B.G. "Jug" Burkett of Dallas.

One of Burkett's missions in life has been exposing fraudulent veterans. He estimates he has examined more than 2,000 newspaper articles and TV reports involving veterans' service records over the past 10 years.

About 75 percent turn out to be fabricated to some extent when Burkett checks military records.

Burkett, co-author of the book "Stolen Valor," said he trains journalists in how to get summaries of war service records. He also explains the process on his Web site, www.stolenvalor.com.

There are many examples of accomplished men who lied about their heroism in wars. They include:

-- Darrow "Duke" Tully, who resigned in 1985 as publisher of the Phoenix Gazette and the Arizona Republic after it was revealed that he made up a heroic military record that included service in Vietnam and Korea.

-- Former U.S. Rep. Wes Cooley of Oregon, a Republican convicted in 1997 of lying on official election documents, claiming to have served with the Army in the Korea War. In reality, he never left the United States.

-- Adm. Jeremy "Mike" Boorda, former chief of naval operations, who committed suicide in 1996 after it was revealed that he was wearing Vietnam combat decorations he never earned.

"The vast majority of phonies don't tell stories about being clerk-typists," said Glenda Whitley, co-author of "Stolen Valor."

"They tell stories about being Navy Seals, Green Berets, fighter pilots, covert operatives, assassins. They all want to be Rambo. This isn't, in my opinion, about the Vietnam War. It's about men and the war mystique. Men have always lied about wars."

Burkett said Ellis has achieved a rare double lie, falsely claiming he fought in Vietnam and that he later protested against it. The fabrications would give him credibility with students and academic colleagues, Burkett said, disputing the argument that Ellis had nothing to gain.

While chronic lying may be a pathology for some, Michael Josephson, founder of the California-based Joseph and Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics, sees it more as a character flaw, one he and others are addressing in public schools through character education programs that stress honesty and other virtues.

Josephson said the Ellis incident illustrates that society has become too casual about lying, and liars have forgotten the damage they can do. It's only natural that Ellis' work as a historian will be treated with increased skepticism, Josephson said, because he has been dishonest about his personal history.

"What he has lost is his credibility," he said. "People usually don't have any idea what that's worth until they lose it."

(Mark O'Keefe can be contacted at mark.okeefe@newhouse.com)

Emphasis is mine. JEFE

[kmudd]

He thinks he is so smart and so superior to us all that he can say anything and people will believe him.

[Guest]

[Doc Jerry]

He's also delusional.


Medics, we're there when you need us.

[DaveL]

If he and his flunkies can lie to us about a freaking fake tan, they will lie about anything!

[Kimmymac]

Messages he got growing up? Like being told he was "sophomoric" by his father?

Kerry is a pathological malignancy, alright. An orange pathological malignancy, at that.

But I think I will forward this post to some of my single friends. I think they meet this kind of man fairly frequently.

[kmudd]

[Jefe]

I wrote to Mark O'Keefe--the author of this article. He is a Boston area writer and probably knows a good deal about John Kerry.

I said,

"Mr. O'Keefe:
Google search about "pathological lying" brought me to your 2001 article about Professor Ellis.

Actually, it all started when I read about John Kerry's silly lie about why he had his "inarticulate moment". Why did he have to create a false explanation for something to what would have been just as easy to leave at "I had an inarticulate moment." We all have them.

Why was it not sufficient for John Kerry to be just another good officer serving in Viet Nam?

Why can't he just be state his case against Reagan's Nicaraguan policy? What made him need to create a false Christmas in Cambodia story to make his point?

Do you see the parallel with Ellis? Or am I just so much against the man that I am reaching?"
-end-
I hope that I can get a national writer to persue this subject on Kerry.