The lying game
Taki lives the High Life
Another famous liar was Alger Hiss, a man I met at a Spectator lunch during the late Seventies. The irony is that I caught him telling a big one just as I turned my back. Hiss was a gentleman and had nice manners and he was also of a certain age, so I let it go. I had been complimentary about Bill Buckley, but after I turned I heard him expressing sorrow that a nice young man like myself had been totally betrayed by Buckley. I suppose the man couldn’t help it. He had lied for so long about his communist connections, mendacity had become second nature.
Mind you, all politicians lie, except some more than others. Yet I’d bet my last devalued greenback that Enoch Powell never lied; he was too great a man to resort to it. Jesse Helms ditto. British politicians were not famous for lying, but now they are, thanks to Tony Blair. The Clintons, of course, have set the standard. No one, not even Lloyd George, can approach them in the art of mendacity. Bill Clinton lied to the Greeks about the Elgin Marbles, lied about meeting Palestinian children who expressed love for Israel and peace, lied about remembering church burnings in his native Arkansas which never took place, lied constantly and about everything, and got into trouble the only time he should have lied, about having sex with that woman. Anyone who can bring the word ‘is’ into question has to be a bigger liar than Baron Münchhausen, but the poor baron had an excuse. Many tall stories were attributed to him by fellow officers.
But Clinton managed to get away with most of his whoppers. He lied about his army service and he lied about the lies he told in order to get out of it, and lied about his trip to Moscow during the height of the Cold War. Now he’s preparing to get back into the White House and Air Force I, and is lying like hell about Barack Obama. Clinton and Hillary both reek of self-pity instead of celebrating their number-one ranking among liars the world over. Which brings me to the most useless hearings since I was dragged in front of a Greek court for having libelled the Greek press. (I called it yellow and the hacks took it badly.) I am, needless to say, referring to the Fayed v. MI6 hearings at the High Court.
It is obvious to anyone not in the pay of Mohamed Fayed that if the Stevens inquiry into the Paris accident, as well as the French and the European Court, decided that that’s all it was, an accident, the present circus is just wasting time and tax-payers’ money. These witnesses can’t all be telling the truth, but the hearings are so weird that nothing will ever come of them. About the only thing they do reveal is that Britain is dysfunctional.
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February 22nd, 2008 3:58pmBritish politicians were not famous for lying: Not according to Hitler; he said of them that when they lie they do it to a large scale (like WMD)not a little bit like the niggardly french.