Those who go for the big con, who audaciously paint false pictures, think everyone else is stupid. They want to promote themselves based on the gullibility of others.

Op-Ed Columnist: Pros at the Con
"The reason that con artists get away with elaborate deception is that most people refuse to live in a world in which cynicism is the rule," says Leon Wieseltier, the magazine's literary editor, who never suspected Glass. "We're mentally prepared for honest mistakes. And everybody lies. But most people lie because they're afraid, not because they get pleasure out of deceiving or because they have contempt for people and standards of probity."

It's hard to protect yourself from the big lie.

The seriously creepy Jayson Blair is riding his con to fame and bucks. He has now replaced Elizabeth Smart as the carnival "get" who shouldn't be got. Katie Couric is planning an NBC special and a "Today" show interview with the New York Times fabulist to help him peddle his book, which has the most risibly tacky title in publishing history — "Burning Down My Master's House."

I have now watched two "Law and Order" episodes based on Blair. Murders were thrown in, because an information scam is not good enough for Dick Wolf's franchise.

An information scam is good enough for George Bush's franchise, though. It's clearly easier and safer — especially in the era of instant, interlocking data and technology — to go with the truth than a ruse, but the Bush team went with a ruse to get us into what Rummy belatedly calls "the long, hard slog" of Iraq.

Now we're in the postwar war, and President Bush is still manipulating reality. He wants to obscure the intensity and nature of the opposition, choosing to lump anyone who resists the American occupation in the category of terrorist.

He has also tried to play down the fatalities and the large number of wounded. He has not been attending memorial services or funerals of the soldiers killed in Iraq, according to The Washington Post. And the Pentagon reinforced a ban on news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings at Dover.

This sort of airbrushing is tasteless, because it diminishes our war heroes instead of honoring them. And pointless, since news outlets are running the names of the dead every day and starting to focus more on the heart-rending stories of the maimed.

Political calculations have now trumped the proclamations of virtue and symbolism that this White House would normally embrace.

It's bad enough to try to hide critical information when you can get away with it. It's really insulting to try to hide it when you can't get away with it.

Those who go for the big con, who audaciously paint false pictures, think everyone else is stupid. They want to promote themselves based on the gullibility of others.

For Cooke, Glass and Blair, their editors were the marks. But at least that unholy trio only soiled newsprint. For the Bush crowd, the American people were the marks.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/opinion/02DOWD.html?pagewanted=print&position=