The Big Lies
If you’ve ever read this column before it may shock you to hear me admit this, but I’m, well, a bit of a cynic. No really. I might come across in print as a Pollyanna; that every morning I greet the day with smile on my lips and a song in my heart as I shout “Good morning!” to the deer and bunny rabbits that prance happily outside my window, but that’s not really the case. In truth, I’m a skeptic at heart.
And at this particular moment in history, being a cynic means you’re going against the grain. We live in a time where of unbridled optimism. Where we hand a trillion dollars... that’s “trillion” with a “tra”... over to the same people who sent the economy swirling down the drain and we tell them to try not to waste the money with the same tone I use telling my kids not to spend the $5 Nana put in their Valentines cards on candy and gum. So there’s not a lot of us cynics left. Being negative and derisive at a time like this makes you feel like you’re dropping a turd in the national punch bowl.
But cynicism is still for me the only rational response to this life. The world is constantly, perpetually serving us up a steady diet of pure horsecrap from the media, academia, the politicians, athletes, the church... you name it. Everyone is lying to us all the time. We’re bombarded with 100% Grade A horsecart like baseballs from a pitching machine and sardonic disbelief is the only bat we have available to fight off the tough inside pitches. It’s the only attitude that makes sense, especially living in Massachusetts, the BS capital of the world. Negativity is to us what the Force is to a Jedi. It’s what gives a Masshole his power. It surrounds us and penetrates us.
Still, as sophisticated as we like to think we are, for some reason Bostonians are more prone to swallowing the lies we’re fed than probably any other people on Earth. For all our supposed street smarts, we’re as susceptible to buying “I can’t get you pregnant. I’m sterile. It runs in my family”- caliber lies than anybody. Hitler talked about “The Big Lie,” a lie so "colossal" no one would have the balls to “distort the truth so infamously” so therefore it must be true. And if things had worked out differently, that little paper hanging son of a bitch would fit right in as a Massachusetts politician or on Boston talk radio.
Anyway, to make a long story short (too late, I know), there are dozens, scores of Big Lies that get told so often they’ve become accepted as fact. By everyone except only those of us with enough on the ball to understand a Big Lie when we hear it. Just to name a few:
First Night is fun
Every New Year’s Eve, every news program in Boston takes it upon themselves to send every reporter they have to different spots around the city to gush about how the First Night celebrations are the most fun ever had in human history and everyone in attendance is one endorphin away from leaving their bodies and achieving a higher level of consciousness. “We’re here at the Public Gardens and everyone is having a great time...” It’s like for one day a year no one can imagine anything could possibly be funner than looking at ice sculptures and being accosted by mimes. I dream of a world where they go live to Quincy Market: “It’s sheer misery down here, Maria. Bitter cold. A true survival situation and morale is at its lowest point yet. The bars and restaurants are price gouging and there’s not a public bathroom anywhere so everyone’s pissing on the ice sculptures and mimes. We’re all losing the will to live...”
The next storm is a going to be a doozy
We can’t have as much as a snow flurry anymore without the news channels inciting panic among the populace and turning the supermarket aisles into a Russian bread riot. Every light dusting of snow is turned into... altogether now... The Blizzard of ‘78. Stop & Shop might be closed for a couple of hours Granny, so you’d better stock up on milk, eggs in bread. Because in a storm you’re going to need... French Toast, I guess. For every snowfall prediction they make, I take the lower number, then cut it in half. Because the real lesson we should take from every weather report is “Keep watching us instead of switching over to Pardon the Interruption.”
Harvard is great
I know, I know... the most famous university in the world. America’s oldest. Yadda yadda yadda. I know the list of famous Harvard alumni is a mile long, but if you’ve ever worked with one, and I have, you realize you can breeze through to graduation at Harvard with no more abilities or knowledge than someone with a U of Phoenix online degree. In the ‘60s, Harvard professors started giving out A’s like they were Fun Size Snickers at Halloween to keep their students out of Vietnam and never stopped. Now it’s at the point where the potted plant in the corner of the room can pull a B+ in Calculus. Fine, so JFK and TS Eliot went there. But so did Gopher from the Love Boat and the Unabomber.
Someone cares about the Hasty Pudding awards
Hasty Pudding is so funny! They’re so outrageous I’m hurting from all the laughing! Get this: the guys dress up in drag and kabuki makeup and give an award to an actor and and actress! It’s so funny I almost forget that they’re all smarmy little children of privilege who can barely take the silver spoons out of their mouths long to plant their lipsticked lips the booty of some F-list Hollywood actor desperate enough for publicity that they’ll fly out to Cambridge in the middle of February.
Bill Belchick is a sourpuss and no one likes playing for him
I love this one. Belichick isn’t glib and doesn’t play grabass with the press in order to curry favor or line up some post-coaching TV gig. Therefore, he must be a jerk. Meanwhile you’ve got Hall of Famers like Junior Seau, Rodney Harrison and even John Lynch, who never made his roster, saying Belichick is the best coach they’ve ever been around. And Jim Brown says of him “Let me tell you about someone I do admire. Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots...” But what does Brown know? He’s only the greatest football player of all time.
A conspiracy killed JFK
I completely understand how people can think it’s not possible for a scruffy little book warehouse worker to change the course of history. But he did, and I’ll argue this point with anyone. For starters, 98% of the people in Dealey Plaza that day told police they heard three shots coming from the window in the book depository. The window where Oswald worked. Where they found his gun. The gun that fired the bullets. It wasn’t until years later that people who had never heard the words “grassy” or “knoll” started talking about puffs of smoke and second gunman and common sense went all to hell. I could go on and on about this but in the interest of space I’ll just point out that the point man on the Warren Commission that started all this conspiracy talk? It was Arlen Specter, who’s now perpetuating the Belichick conspiracy. Case closed.
Fenway Park is work saving
I know this is sacrilege to a lot of people, but Fenway just isn’t that good. I This ownership deserves a lot of credit for the improvements they’ve made, but you can’t put a shine on a sneaker. I’m a medium sized guy in a large world, and even I cram into those seats like a veal calf. The Monster Seats are glorified bad bleacher seats anywhere else. From Sect. 1 in right field to Pesky’s Pole are some of the worst seats in all of sports as you’re literally facing the centerfielder. And God forbid you sit next to some fat guy like I did once, whose loaf-of-bread sized sweaty muffin tops rubbed their oily discharge all over me the whole night. History, schmistory, no one deserves that at $100 a ticket. “America’s Ballpark Most Beloved by Chiropractors.”
“I never watch TV.”
The only lie bigger than this is the mother of all lies, the “We don’t own a TV.” Riiight. So riddle me this: What did you do when the Patriots were in all those Super Bowls? When the Sox and Celtics were winning championships? Or election night? On 9/11 fercrissakes? Look in your neighbor’s window? Stand in the aisle at Best Buy? Sit in your living room saying “Gee I hear something big is going on but I’ll have to wait until the morning paper to find out what it’s all about...”? You can pretend all you want that it’s 1909, just don’t expect us to play along.
Global Warming
This is my favorite Big Lie of all. How many years in a row of does it have to get colder before we admit it isn’t getting hotter? Believe me, I wish it was, but it’s not. It’s been getting colder for the last 11 years. We’ve got ice storms in Kentucky. The Antarctic ice cap is the biggest it’s been in 40 years. But the people who get paid big money to ring the climate change alarm insist this is all “consistent with the Global Warming model.” Remember Katrina? Caused by Global Warming. The scarcity of hurricanes since Katrina? Caused by Global Warming. The cold winter? Ditto. The mild summer last year? You guessed it. It doesn’t matter what the weather is, the nitwits making millions off this scam will tell you my Ford Contour is destroying the climate while they heat their mansions and travel in limos and private jets. In the same way that in the 70s the same crew said my dad’s Country Squire station wagon was causing Global Cooling. Because that was of course “consistent with their model.” So I’ve developed a model that says if I sleep with your wife, the weather will be perfect, the economy will turn around and we’ll have a college football playoff system. The fact that it hasn’t worked is consistent with my I Should Bang Your Wife model, and we should keep on doing it until things get better.
Believe me, this list only scratches the surface. If life thus far has taught me anything, it’s that everyone is full of crap and you shouldn’t believe anything you hear. Unless it’s coming from me. You know I wouldn’t lie to you.