Our society has come a long way in our acceptance of things that aren’t true. We listen to lawyers give closing arguments defending a client who is 100% guilty and applaud him or her for their cleverness. We are swayed by a politician’s campaign speech and are won over more by how it is crafted and delivered than we are by what is actually said, mainly because we know the vast majority of it isn’t even true or possible. We know they’re playing fast and loose with truth and accept it.
And so, what do we do with this story about a high school football player faking his own recruitment to the point of holding a televised press conference revealing his choice of colleges? Inevitably, something like this was going to happen. Some will say the media is to blame because they’ve blown college football recruiting out the wazoo with hype; others will say the boy is wrong for concocting the story. I’d say there’s plenty of blame to go around, but the real question is this: take football out of the story and substitute politics and tell me how it’s different. Maybe we should start writing stories like this at CNN, MSNBC, and FOXNews about the way candidates lie to the country in their campaign speeches?
