Jaffe and I have been following the story since we tuned in to the initial 60 minutes segment. I must admit, I tried to get through the book when it first came out and could not. It was too formulaic. I wish I could say I smelled a rat, but I did not. But I couldn’t smell the tea either.
Embellishment is no crime.
Or most of us speakers would be doing time.
Though it is the tagline for my most requested speech,
Loco Rivera – my gaucho friend – never did say: “There is nowhere to go. And nothing to do. But to be of service”
But he would have. Could have. Lived his life that way.
And I needed a tagline.
A speaker needs to be able to tell the truth even truer than it happened.
Like a painter painting the flower even brighter than it is, to display the flower’s beauty
He makes the truth … ‘truthier’.
And makes the world a better place.
Which is his goal.
Embellishment is no crime.
Embezzlement is.
That is where the questions must be posed.
Did Mortenson use the suffering of the children of the Himalayas
to line his own pockets? That’s what we have yet to ascertain.
If he did, that would be criminal.
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Thanks Jeff. Enjoyed this – especially the embellishment/embezzlement part.
Here’s to more truthiness for everyone!
Christa
I dunno Jefe… this isn’t the kind of embellishment whose purpose is to make a story (or a pair of shoes for that matter) more colorful. This is the kind of embellishment that is just… weird, for one thing. Why would someone who did seven good things feel the need to say he did twelve? I get that he did seven good things but, what does this say about a person? I think lying is, on its very own, a problem. The truth and our integrity is pretty much all we have to express to the world, our loved ones, and ourselves who we are and who we wish to be.
Thanks Jeff – as always, I appreciate your wisdom and clarity. Here’s the Yann Martel quote I was paraprasing earlier: “Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it’s true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths. As for nonfiction, for history, it may be real, but its truth is slippery, hard to access, with no fixed meaning bolted to it. If history doesn’t become story, it dies to everyone except the historian.” – Yann Martel (Beatrice and Virgil)
Truthier…cute new word. Integrity. Ethics. Of the story. You brought home, Jeff, an NPR interview of Teri Gross and the two authors of the Bang, Bang Club, now a movie. It is a great interview obtaining authenticity and the ethics behind a story from two photo-journalists. Then the consequences. Dramatic illustration, but relative. It is about where, when, at what moment does it become crossing the line to get the story, to share the story, to profit from the story…http://www.npr.org/2011/04/21/135513724/two-war-photographers-on-their-injuries-ethics