Shoulda kept his pants on

Well, our miscreant, former crime fighter, governor has resigned. Obviously we didn't vote for him, since we didn't live here back then, but I probably would have. I admired him for going after big businesses and crime when he was state attorney general, and until yesterday thought he was doing an OK job as gov. But $80,000 on call girls, while governor? And he was caught by procedures he set up! That is just beyond stupid. David Paterson, our new gov sounds interesting, at least, and will be the first African-American governor of the state, and is legally blind. Interesting, no?

Why lie?

The NY Times has an article today about yet another "memoirist" who fabricated almost all of her book. I haven't read any of the books mentioned in the article, but the argument posed by the author in this case rings false to me: "I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it." What about writing a novel - those have been known to have a large impact on people. Or doing an extended investigative journalism piece? Why fabricate an entire history that was eventually brought down by the author's sister? Did she not think anyone would ever find out?! I accept that anyone writing anything other than a purely factual, documentation based biography will have elaborations and some fabrications - who has a perfect memory? - but that is very different than making up an entire past. If it is a compelling story as memoir, it should still be a compelling story as fiction. If not, and the interest in the story was simply because it was "true," then it probably wasn't any good to begin with.