Just Ask His Mother
Mark S. Kirk is a candidate for the U.S. Senate in the grand state of Illinois. He has been spinning some yarns about, what else? Military Service. His Naval Reserve service statements have raised some fact checkers’ eyebrows. Big deal, take a number on telling stories about candidates “misspeaking” about their military service. Yes, but Mr. Kirk had more. His tales of working in a nursery school found the fact checkers wagging a finger and shaking their heads. So, the little senate candidate who cried wolf or coyote or really big dog one too many times had skeptics emerge with demands for proof of the tale of his boating accident in 1976 on Lake Michigan. This accident was his epiphany, Mr. Kirk told the good Illini, the moment when he decided to enter public service because he was in the lake, in water so cold that he was near death. Eyebrows arose but Mr. Kirk’s mother signed an affidavit that swears that when she visited her son in the hospital following the accident his lips were blue and his body temperature was somewhere in the 80s range.
Truth does find its way out into the open and when it does, trust is dissipated. Without trust, well, even when you are telling the truth, no one believes you. And the next thing you know your campaign is faxing out notes from your mother so that you can be in the Senate. Never mind the ethics – human dignity demands more!
