Telling the truth sometimes requires a fib or two

As most of you know, I am not a political columnist. But events of the past year have tinged the scribblings of many a word handler across the land. I confess I am drawn to some of today's big shots in Washington like a hungry 7-year-old to a bottle of school paste.

(Boy, you have to have a few years on you to understand that last bit. Sorry.)

Several years ago, when Joan Finney, the Kansas state treasurer, was running for governor of the Sunflower State, one of the state government reporters for the Capital-Journal declared at a news planning meeting: "I sure hope Finney wins. Not because she's the best candidate. Because it would be like having a train wreck to cover every day."

She won. There were, indeed, plenty of gubernatorial mishaps to keep the presses rolling.

Well, the new regime in Washington is like having a four-alarm fire at an orphanage staffed by nuns sworn to a vow of silence, preventing them from warning their innocent wards of impending doom.

Really. It's that bad.

Among the many lasting impacts the Trump White House will leave as its legacy are the additions to the words and phrases used in our political discourse.

Listen: alternative news.

Hear the irony?

Kellyanne Conway, whose tangled tongue almost guarantees she will be the provider of a quote of the day almost every day, will go down in history, literally, for suggesting that there is more than one way to speak the truth.

And she's right.

Spinning the facts is a time-honored tradition, and such manipulation of the words we use to convey a certain outcome has been around since Neanderthals advanced beyond using "Ugh!" to express every thought and idea.

You know I love examples, so here is one to consider.

Your neighbor tells you he is going to paint his house. He says he is going to paint the house white. You tell other neighbors that old Joe next door is going to paint his house white. But old Joe, for reasons to be determined, paints his house blue. So, did you lie when you told your neighbors the house would be white?

Michael Flynn, President Trump's national security adviser, resigned this week because, it was widely reported, he "misled" the vice president and possibly others regarding a meeting with the Russian ambassador while Flynn was still a civilian.

I'm not entirely sure how a conversation like this constitutes a national crisis, but suffice to say Flynn's accusers are quoting the U.S. Constitution a lot, so there must be something awry.

What I want to know is this: What's the difference between misleading someone and lying?

Isn't that what politicians of every stripe do every day? They steer so-called facts to convey a message in a way that will put the politicians in the best light. Most of the time, the official version and reality are fairly good friends, but they are not mirror images. No way.

I remember the first serious lie I ever told. I wish I had known about alternative facts and the art of misdirection. But I was only 7 years old. I still had a lot to learn about truth and its cousins.

Here's what happened.

I was walking home from Shady Nook School with one of the neighbor kids on Killough Valley in the Ozarks over yonder. Charles Cole was my age, and he told me he had chased a rabbit that morning on the way to school into a hollow log. He said if we had an ax we could chop the rabbit out of the log. Our foresight ended there. I have no idea what we would have done with a chopped-out-of-a-log rabbit.

When we passed my house, I put my lunchbox on the front porch and ran around the back to the tool shed and retrieved the ax. Charles and I headed up the valley toward his house.

We found the hollow log and whacked and whacked at it trying to reach the rabbit. It was truly an eventful afternoon, because Charles became so frustrated with the whole process that he yelled "Darn it!" over and over. In my childhood home, "darn" was a shadow of "damn." And 7-year-old boys who said "darn" were headed for hell just like the ones who said "damn." It's all right there in the Bible. That's what my Sunday-school teacher and my mother said.

They wouldn't lie. Or use alternative facts. Would they?

When I got home that evening, my mother was frantic. She had found the lunchbox on the porch, but she hadn't found me.

When my mother asked me where I had been, I didn't tell her about any rabbit in a hollow log. I said Charles made me go with him to see the newborn calf in the neighbor's barn. Where was the ax, you ask? Safely returned to the tool shed a little worse for wear.

The rabbit? I don't know if there ever was a rabbit. Perhaps Charles was spouting alternative facts. Maybe not.

This is what I know to be the absolute truth. My mother was mighty angry over my escapade (she later heard a version of the whole story from Charles' mother). My mother grabbed the handiest thing she could find, which was a Broadman Hymnal on the upright piano in the living room, and she whacked me on the bottom something good.

After that, singing "In the Sweet By and By" took on a whole new meaning.

Going forward, I have tried to keep my lies to the whitest variety, knowing full well that there most certainly is a time and place for alterations in the armor of truth.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.