{"id":3864,"date":"2024-07-26T06:44:31","date_gmt":"2024-07-26T10:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3864"},"modified":"2024-07-26T06:45:07","modified_gmt":"2024-07-26T10:45:07","slug":"true-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/26\/true-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"True Lies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>

Jay Leno rose from the obscurity of doing stand-up routines for miniscule audiences to hosting The Tonight Show.<\/em>

As he recounts in his autobiography, Leading with My Chin<\/em>, he gradually learned the comic profession\u2019s tricks of the trade.

One of his early learning experiences happened when he was a guest on the Dinah Shore talk show.

The show\u2019s talent coordinator asked about his \u201coutcue.\u201d What was his last joke, so the band knew when to play him off the stage? Leno, however, was hesitant to give away his last line, even to the band. \u201cHow about if I just say, \u2018Thank you, thank you very much!\u2019  <\/em>Twice, OK?  And that\u2019ll be the cue.\u201d

Unfortunately, Dinah Shore\u2019s welcome was so warm, and the audience\u2019s enthusiasm was so great for his first one-liner, that Leno lost his composure. 

\u201cThank you, thank you very much!\u201d he said.

The band leader, caught off guard, stubbed out his cigarette, waved the musicians into action, and ushered Leno off the stage.

Dinah Shore smiled happily, the audience went wild, and his scheduled interview was over before it even started.

\u201cIt was the most ridiculous slot of my career,\u201d Leno wrote.

It\u2019s a great story.

The only problem is that it didn\u2019t actually happen. Or more specifically, it didn\u2019t happen to Jay Leno.

As an investigative journalist discovered, the incident actually happened to another comic, one of Leno\u2019s friends. Leno paid his friend $1,000 for the rights to use the story in his autobiography. As if it had happened to him. <\/em>

James Frey\u2019s remarkable memoir about drug addiction rehab, A Million Little Pieces<\/em>, was propelled to the top of the bestseller lists 20 years ago, in no small part because of Oprah Winfrey\u2019s enthusiastic endorsement.  When it was revealed that much of the book was pure fabrication, Winfrey scorched him before her studio audience.

In 2001 George O\u2019Leary began his dream job \u2013 head football coach at Notre Dame \u2013 only to be fired five days later when it became clear he had falsified details of his academic and athletic resume.

Rigoberta Mencha\u2019s dramatic first-person accounts of massacres by Guatemalan soldiers brought her international fame, a visit to the Pope, and the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Then it was learned Mencha had invented important details, such as the live burning of her brother. \u201cMy truth,\u201d she explained, \u201cis that my brother was burned alive.\u201d Even though, in point of fact, it never happened.

As Os Guinness laments in his book Time for Truth<\/em>, it\u2019s increasingly hard to distinguish \u201cmy truth\u201d \u2013 how someone chooses to paint reality \u2013 from Reality itself.

\u201cWe are all in the business of impression management,\u201d he writes. \u201cTo be a person [today] is therefore to be a project. It is up to each of us to create and wear our own \u2018designer personality\u2019 \u2013 carefully crafting ourselves with resumes, skills, and appearances all chosen with the expertise and care of a Paris couturier designing a dress for a Hollywood actress on Oscar night.\u201d

In other words, having \u201cstrong character\u201d isn\u2019t nearly as important as having a \u201cstriking personality.\u201d And we wouldn\u2019t want little details, like the truth, to get in the way of our best efforts at impression management.

When we open the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, it\u2019s no surprise that we are immediately confronted by a different message: \u201cTherefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another\u201d (Ephesians 4:25).

Your life is not your own project. Your life is God\u2019s project. <\/em>

And life\u2019s deepest joys come not from crafting self-promoting truths, but aligning ourselves with the One who is Truth itself.

That can be true for both me and you today.

And we don\u2019t even have to pay a thousand bucks.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Jay Leno rose from the obscurity of doing stand-up routines for miniscule audiences to hosting The Tonight Show. As he recounts in his autobiography, Leading with My Chin, he gradually learned the comic profession\u2019s tricks of the trade. One of his early learning experiences happened when he was a guest on… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3865,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[275,108],"class_list":["post-3864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lying","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3864"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3867,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3864\/revisions\/3867"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}