How Many Half-Walkers Make One Lie?
Wendy Davis, the darling of women’s rights crusader’s for her
dramatic filibuster in opposition of curtailing abortion services in Texas, has
come under fire for making some ‘inaccurate’ statements regarding her struggles
as a young single mother.
First of all, let’s get this out of the way: No two ways
about it, being a single mother at any age is difficult. Couple that with
recent family-unfriendly policies adopted in many states and the country
overall such as shifting
tax burdens onto the backs of the poor; large, super-profitable
businesses hiring people for part-time as opposed to full-time work to
avoid paying higher wages and providing benefits such as paid time off and
healthcare, etc. and the basic and necessary work of parenting becomes harder
than people who’ve never had to deal with those burdens could know.
I am not knocking Wendy Davis because she was a single
mother.
I am knocking her because, like far too many public
servants, she's played with the truth.
She’s had to backpeddle
from initial statements that portrayed her more sympathetically than the truth
can support. We’ve seen this too many times in the past to let exaggerations,
embellishments, and (in some cases) outright lies to slide past us and into our
social sub-consciousness:
- One President wasn’t a crook, and then was;
- A different one didn’t trade arms for hostages, and then, yes, he did;
- Another one didn’t have sex with ‘that woman’, and then, did;
- One isn’t gay, just has a ‘wide stance’;
- This politician claimed a world-class marathon time, but not really;
- Another closed a bridge, didn’t close a bridge, just found out about it, and knew about it all along. Very, very, busy, man.
The point of the list is that we, the people, have heard
this sort of thing too often to fall for it anymore. We should never accept it
from anyone.
We know that politicians have smart people around them
advising and parsing each utterance to be spoken. So, how do we drill down
deeper to more fully understand why this happens?
When “It is What It Is” isn’t enough, exaggeration and
embellishing follow. And politicians are people too. I think. However, they need to be accepted more than your average
person-on-the-street.
They need it because they need votes. Joe Six-pack doesn’t need
your vote.
Yet, for myself, whenever I hear someone in office or
running for office make a factually distorted remark (I call it pulling a ‘Half-Walker’),
I immediately rethink my thinking regarding prior thinking about that person. Or
so I think.
If I (or you) can’t trust someone to report accurately about
things that are easily discovered
independently, how can I (or you) trust them to do the right thing when the
public eye is not focused on them? I can’t. Can you?
Now, I know that some will see this as an attack on Wendy
Davis because she’s an advocate for women’s issues. There is nothing I can say
to dissuade them otherwise. And, really, it’s not so much a criticism of Ms.
Davis as it is a criticism of the way we, the public, are seemingly never satisfied with a regular story of overcoming obstacles.
The backstory now has to be larger than life.
The thing that gets me the most is that Davis really
didn’t need to embellish anything. Raising a child is hard work under
the best of circumstances with a fully committed partner and several magnitudes
harder by yourself.
We need, more than ever before, honesty and integrity in our
leaders. We need our leaders to strive for excellence and to lead by example.
Wendy Davis has failed that test. She tried to pull a Half-Walker. To her
credit she has admitted as much, yet her admission speaks of ‘tightening’ her
language, another Half-Walker.
It’s been said that the truest test of character is when you
do the right thing even when know is looking.
