Lying

The people over at Sully have a continuing series entitled What Can We Believe about Palin?

The answer, to me, is absolutely nothing. Not because Palin is necessary any more full of shit than the next politician, but because she's a terrible liar in that while skilled liars (ie, "politicians") understand the nuances of when to lie and how you can use earnestness in one case to set up lying for another, as evidenced by my offensive line in high school, Palin merely seems incapable of not being a horrendously compulsive liar. Someone like George Washington will allow a myth about something as inconsequential as him copping to cutting down a cherry tree in order to set himself up as an honest guy so that later on whenever he had to bullshit the public about something that really mattered they'd swallow it. With Palin, you get the feeling she'd reflexively say there's no tree, the tree is just out to get her, as is everybody else, and besides that she's never been to Alaska, where the tree supposedly is. You'd be like...why are you lying about the tree when nobody actually cares about the tree? She has set herself up such that when she DOES tell the truth, who could possibly believe her?

Lying is a Costanzian skill that is best left to those of us who are actually good at it.