Seducing the Demon Read Free

chocolates. “Heart-healthy,” by the way, is another phrase that sounds like a great deal more than it is.
    You cannot tell the truth when words are corrupted. Our country was founded on the notion that the plain words of the people are more important than the fancy words of kings. We admire George Washington not only for refusing to be king but also for not sanctioning lying—even though the cherry-tree story may be wholly apocryphal. We hold politicians to a much lesser standard today. We expect them to lie to us. We grant them the latitude to lie. We are lax about holding them to their word. We don’t expect them to tell the truth about power any more than we expect movie stars to tell the truth about love. And we write off many lies as PR. Having stopped expecting truth, we rarely get it.
    I’ve never stopped expecting it, never stopped trying my best to tell it and never stopped getting mad when it is not told to me. Why do I care so much? God only knows. I was born that way. I’ve made it my mission in writing to get other people to hate lies too.
    Why is getting mad at lies so important? Because our survival depends on it, our republic depends on it. Our lives depend on it—whether it’s pharmaceutical companies lying about drugs or chemical corporations lying about pollution or politicians lying about why our young people are coming home in flag-draped boxes. We are in danger unless we know the truth, and the truth depends on words.
    During the Vietnam War we used to say that people came home in “body bags.” Those words became politicized, so now the military speaks of “transfer tubes”—transferring “folks” (as the President says) from the battlefield to the cemetery, I guess. This happens after “the patient failed to fulfill his wellness potential”—i.e., died.
    It was when I said this in my commencement speech that the faculty and some students started to cheer and others started to loudly boo while they passed various beach balls above their heads through the crowd.
    My speech had started very late because three unannounced politicians had been limousined up to the outdoor podium and wedged in front of the other speakers—like the college president, the provost of City University, the dean of the faculty, the winner of the top student prize and me. The pols had been nowhere in evidence when the academic procession began at nine-thirty in the morning. So we all sat there in our gowns and hoods and mortarboards while some nameless nerd who was hopelessly running for mayor of New York City, Senator Charles Schumer and a hopeless would-be challenger to Senator Hillary Clinton talked on and on about their own triumphs.
    Chuck Schumer was mercifully brief. He told the audience that he was the one they should thank for the deductibility of college tuition. I wistfully remembered those days in the sixties when I taught at CCNY and tuition was free. This generation of students probably didn’t even know about the great ideal of college education for all who were capable. They worked two or three jobs and incurred enormous tuition debts (or their parents did) and yet they kept voting for a President who thought only the rich should have college degrees. Their ignorance of history pained me. I am becoming an old fart, I thought, woolgathering about free college tuition at CUNY. Young people just assume they have no choice but to begin their adult lives deep in debt. Surely they would shoot the messenger if I talked about the antique ideal of free education. I decided I would keep my speech about language and telling the truth but cut it as short as I could.
    Orwellian Newspeak is everywhere in the air, I said.
    Senator Orrin Hatch has alleged “capital punishment is our society’s recognition of the sanctity of human life.” I could go on and on. There is no dearth of examples.
    Why would someone like me spend her whole life indoors playing with words? Because words often determine who wins or