Tag Archives: lying

Should Lying Be a Crime?

News, Politics, , , , ,

Recently, the Casey Anthony trial took all of the breath out of America, as people focused day and night on whether some young woman killed her kid. Personally, I wasn’t all that transfixed by the trial, but I do pay a lot of attention to what other people obsess over. I am a communications scholar, after all.

However, one thing that caught my attention is the crime she was eventually convicted for, in lieu of the major ones for which she was exonerated by the jury (as long as Nancy Grace isn’t considered one of her peers, as that woman doesn’t know the meaning of the word “impartial”), was lying to the police. They couldn’t get her for murder, neglect or bad parking, but they got her for lying to police.

Personally, I have a real problem with this. I’ve always been a strong advocate to not liking whenever government tries to get a foothold in control over its people, ever. And one area is the crossroads of compliance and truth. I don’t think people understand what a trauma it can be to have the police questioning you, trying to get you to slip up in a conversation so that they can use it against you in a court of law. The police are not your friends, your allies, or anyone with whom you have any allegiance. Yet, somewhere down the line, there’s this belief that if the police ask you a question, you have to answer truthfully.

I disagree. If I’m ever accused of anything, I would like to think it is in my personal rights to do everything possible to keep the government from suppressing my personal rights of freedom. They may have a responsibility to figure out the truth, but that doesn’t equal a responsiblity on my part to help them do that. Government is NEVER on your side, no matter how many political ads try to say otherwise in hopes of getting another corrupt politician elected. The police work with the sole purpose of convicting people who they suspect of crimes. When you are in their headlights, you stopped being protected by the government and become a target for all sorts of abuse. And historically, government and police are well known of doing everything possible to take advantage of that abuse. Lately, the Supreme Court has been siding with them on quite a few cases, meaning that if you’re ever suspected of anything, kiss your ass good bye because there is no one left to protect you from the system itself. Certainly not the truth.

I’ve seen the truth manipulated in ways that would make a politician spin. As an investigator, I remember working on cases where very directed investigators would go after a suspect with such a zeal that you wonder what kept them from launching it in the first place. I’ve seen people who could have been very innocent who were railroaded because some inquisitor “felt” that was his target, and all other logic was irrelevant. I remember having a conversation with an investigator when I pointed out that the “suspect” couldn’t have been guilty because of the logic of the facts, and being told “Well, I’m sure she’s guilty of something.” That’s the mindset that leaves me realizing that in no circumstance would I ever want to have to rely on the “truth” as being the difference between my freedom and my incarceration.

There have been a few cases recently where politicians have been brought down strictly on the lying crime. Most of them I didn’t like because I generally don’t like politicians anyway, but at the same time, I’ve liked the whole “crime of lying” thing even worse. I think we have something really to worry about when we’re more concerned about putting someone in prison because our interrogation tripped someone up into saying something he or she may not have meant, or we threw so much information at someone that 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 2 to them anymore. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s a sad day when we put someone away because we didn’t like them (like Casey Anthony) but said nothing about the way we did it because we didn’t like them in the first place.

I figure most people will disagree with me because of how they feel about the Casey Anthony case. That, unfortunately, is practically my point, but people stop listening once they let their passions do their thinking for them.

Another Writer Accused of Making Stuff Up

Books, Memoirs, News, Politics, Writing, , , , , , , ,

The “Three Cups of Tea” author, Greg Mortenson, has been accused of making up stories in his book.  Accused by Jon Krakauer of CBS’s 60 Minutes, Mortenson denies the falsehood claim and is not commenting further due to a medical condition he is suffering from recently. Unfortunately, with him out of commission and not on record to defend himself, the media frenzy will probably swarm him at this horrible time for him. Hopefully, he gets a chance to defend himself, and the truth is reached, regardless of what that truth might be.

With this accusation, the writing community appears to be undergoing yet another challenge, as it did when the whole James Frey controversy occurred with “A Million Little Pieces”, a book that featured numerous made-up events in a book claimed to be entirely non-fiction. Hopefully, the accusations will not continue to paint a dark light on the many works other writers have put out there, making it so that readers walk into every bookstore, expecting fiction in the non-fiction section and accepting each memoir produced as a “quasi-” real account.

I recently published my “Neo Revolutionary Messages” on Kindle and Nook, and I promise that it is entirely non-fiction, as it is an analysis of the August 1991 Coup d’etat in the Soviet Union (where Boris Yeltsin challenged the hardliners when they imprisoned Mikhail Gorbachev). Yet, with stories like the one I linked here, there’s always the fear that a reader is going to think the author took liberties with the facts for the sake of trying to tell a better story.

The Music Industry Just Doesn’t Get It…They Lied to Us

Economics, Music, , , , , , , , , ,

You would think with the amount of money that goes into music studios that they would have actually hired someone who is capable of telling the executives what is really going on. Instead, we have a bunch of studio heads that are so convinced they understand the pulse of the consuming public that they don’t have to listen to anyone, and for some reason they’re losing more and more money every year.

The problem emerged in the beginning when music went from albums to CDs and then online. The old paradigm consisted of music studios finding talent, packaging it and then filtering it out to radio stations that then opened the doors for people to rush to record stores to purchase the brand new content. Well, somewhere down the line that model fell apart, mainly because a few little promises made never came through, and then the industry changed overnight as a result.

What I’m talking about was a promise that the music industry made to consumers when albums were on the out and CDs were coming in. The simple promise was that CDs, which were cheaper to make than albums, were going to be cheaper for customers. This was the selling point to get people to give up their vinyl albums and welcome CDs. The promise was that CDs would cost $9.99 all of the time. Well, when CDs first came out, that WAS the price, and then quickly they started to increase to $13.99 and other such prices. Now, if you’re lucky, a CD can be found “on sale” for $9.99 off of the retail price of much more.

We were lied to. Oh, the naysayers will claim such a promise was never made, but for those of us who were paying close attention back then, the promise definitely was made. Instead of following the plan, executives realized that consumers are stupid, or so they thought, so they just went back on their word and sold CDs for what they figured they could get, rather than for how much it was promised.

A funny thing happened right after that. The Internet showed up. You see, if that never happened, the music industry would still be the major entity it was a few decades ago. But no one anticipated that a couple of geeks at universities wanting to talk to each other would lead to something so powerful and so overwhelming. But the Internet happened, and the music industry was in the wrong place at the right time.

The consumer population was kind of pissed at the music industry at this time because of the whole lie thing, and then when the next generation realized that it could get all of this expensive technology for free, they jumped on it. So two things happened at once. The music industry cheated the older customers by lying to them while the younger customers grew up with a new paradigm where they got everything for free. You see, if the music industry hadn’t lied to the older generation, they might have actually had powerful allies on their side. Instead, they had a bunch of pissed off customers who decided to just let the music industry fend for itself. Where these people could have been the “moral” guides to the younger generation, who wants to be the moral guides to people who are doing something you figure the bad guys deserve anyway?

Well, the music industry sat it out, thinking things would fall back in place, but their real ally, musicians jumped ship on them as well. Oh sure, the established musicians were in their corner, but consumers are a fickle sort, dumping old artists for new ones because music really doesn’t have standards that are controlled by executives. Music is music and people will seek it wherever it can be found.

And a lot of future musicians realized that if they wanted to make it in the industry, there was a new direction to take, one that required they take their music directly to the people. This opened up the industry to everyone, and as more and more independent artists showed up, the music industry had less and less control over the content.

That’s kind of where we are today. The music industry is trying to save itself by reestablishing the controls, but no one really cares anymore. There was an attempt to force streaming content under draconian rules, but music executives are starting to realize that this isn’t leading to sales. What the music industry never realized was that the future was going to be somewhat of a free for all because if you can’t trust the industry to do what they promise, then you look elsewhere for results.

Recently, I bought a CD for the first time in about a year. Yeah, it’s been that long. I’m still pissed. It was Taylor Swift’s new album, and it was on sale for $9.99. Imagine that. Anyway, it’s a great CD, but it’s probably the only one I’ll buy for at least another year. I’m one of their solid customers, and it’s taken a long time to bring me back to the market. Before I stopped buying music, I used to buy three or four albums a week. They’ll never regain the market share they had before. It’s just not going to happen.

Like I said, the music industry lied back when it needed to win over its customer base. So, hopefully as these executives find new jobs mowing lawns, or whatever it is unemployed music executives are capable of doing, they’ll remember it was really their fault. And they should keep in mind that if they promise to mow someone’s lawn and then go back on their promise, they’re probably not going to get paid. The real world is kind of mean that way.