Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

There's a new TV series on Fox called "Lie to Me". I would probably never have watched it, but it is pinned into the viewing schedule right after "American Idol", which as you may know, is my wife's favorite show. I don't know if this is a show that's steeped in science, like the hit "CSI" series, or "Bones", though I would really like to know. The characters for this consulting group are called in by everyone from Athletic Directors of Colleges to the FBI to assess whether or not someone is telling the truth.

One would think a simple Lie Detector test would suffice, but early on in the show, the "Lie Squad" dispelled all lie detection by machine as almost useless, as any emotional tumult unrelated to the questions could skew the results. So, this team of geniuses is able to take thousands of years of human history and produce a series of gestures, facial expressions and body language that frame up whether a person is lying or telling the truth.

It really is a fascinating show, but has shed so much doubt on tried and true adages about how to tell if a person is lying that I'm all at sea over the whole issue. The first myth to die was the one about how a person who's lying looks to the left. Apparently, according to this show, a good liar can look you right in the eye and never even twitch. That's pretty unsettling, though it does explain some lawyers & stockbrokers. Of course, remember, we just went through an election, and, well..... Speaking of twitches, a twitch is evidently important around the mouth. The pursing of the lips shows the speaker doesn't believe what they're saying. The slight snarl of the corners of the lips point to contempt by the speaker to the reader of lips. I won't go into any more of this. I'll leave it to the reader to watch and make up their own mind about the premise.

Lying, which is the natural predator of the Truth, is in us all. A classic situation to illustrate this point is when a wife, looking in the mirror, turns and asks her husband, "Does this make me look fat?" At this point, Truth goes out the window. The wife, obviously, wants the husband to lie. On the other hand, when out to dinner, the wife might ask, "Were you looking at that woman?" To which, however he answers, the husband is trapped. He had better tell the Truth, but of necessity, he might be forced to lie. Unless he says: "Yes, she is a beautiful and voluptuous creature that I could easily fall for, leaving you and the children to fend for yourselves, and gladly show her off at the Country Club to all of my buddies," the wife will never believe the husband. You can see how this one commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness", can be a real sin-producer.

In our culture, it is generally accepted that lying to protect the innocent is O.K. Telling our little toddler that Santa Claus is coming to town, does not bring out the same vilification from our peers as saying something like, "Oh, it's great to see you" when a despised family member makes their appearance. Lying, it seems, has become a national pastime. I remember when I was a young lad, a wise old Uncle, Uncle Ralph, told me: "Telling the truth means you don't have to remember what you said today, tomorrow." In other words, though tact is a critical and dying art in America, it's easier just to tell the truth, except to your wife about her weight and that woman at the other table.