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CNN Talkback Live

Is Everyone Lying? Are You?

Aired June 19, 2001 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BOBBIE BATTISTA, HOST: A Pulitzer Prize winning history professor fakes his own history, embellishing his life story with bogus memories of Vietnam. Call them what you want: distortions or enhancements.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I find out that I've been lied to, I'm very, very angry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: Little white ones.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's just shameless.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: Big fat ones.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I did not...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: ... embellishments, exaggerations or whoppers?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You lied, and lied, lied and lied and lied.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It boggles the mind that they even had to make up these people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything on the label was really triple what they said.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: Do lies make you angry? Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to TALKBACK LIVE. All right, have you ever embellished your own history, you know, added a little something here or there to make yourself more interesting? A lot of people do. But Mt. Holyoke College history professor Joseph Ellis enhanced his Vietnam War credentials, claiming, among other things, to have been in Saigon and on the staff of General William Westmoreland. He now admits none of it's true. But Ellis is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, described by colleagues as a man of the highest integrity.

Our first guest today, Richard Shenkman. He is writing about Joseph Ellis. Richard is a presidential historian and editor of HistoryNewsNetwork.org. He's also the author of "Blind Ambition, Gaining Power at Any Cost," and "Legends, Lies and Cherished Myths of American History."

Richard, thanks very much for joining us.

I would imagine that this came as quite a shock to you, as a fellow historian.

(AUDIO GAP)

RICHARD SHENKMAN, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: ... shock to me. Ellis is a famous historian. He's not just some back-to-the-classroom historian, he's been prominent for years now. A few years ago, it was Ellis who came out definitively with the statement that because of DNA testing, Thomas Jefferson indeed had fathered at least one child with Sally Hemmings. So it is shocking to see an historian of this man's prominence and caliber confessing to this. It's -- and I have to tell you that I'm outraged by it.

BATTISTA: We're having a little bit of trouble with your microphone, Richard, but we'll just press ahead here while they're trying to fix that. I think one of the shocking things that came out about this story was the reaction of Mt. Holyoke to this whole thing. They stood firmly by him and, you know, said that he had a reputation for great integrity, honesty and honor. And then the president of Mt. Holyoke added that, "We at the college do not know what public interest the 'Globe' is trying to serve through a story of this nature."

SHENKMAN: Yeah, that's as remarkable as Joseph Ellis' misrepresentations and lies. Ellis was lying about himself. The president of Mt. Holyoke is speaking for the university, and she is condoning lying as the president of a university. That's almost worse, in my opinion. I don't get it.

BATTISTA: We're really losing your audio, so I'm going to jump off you for a minute and go to our next guest until we fix those technical problems.

Brad Blanton is with us, author of "Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth," and "Practicing Radical Honesty."

Brad, good to see you.

BRAD BLANTON, AUTHOR, "PRACTICING RADICAL HONESTY": Thanks. Good to be here.

BATTISTA: First of all, your reaction to this Ellis story?

BLANTON: Well, I think it's probably consistent with what a lot of people do. That is, it reflects back to us like a mirror the way most people are. We, in fact, all of us lie like hell all the time. Now he got caught. For everyone that's caught, there are thousands that aren't.

BATTISTA: But that's a major league lie that he got caught in. That's not the same as telling your mom her hair looks good when it doesn't or, you know, something like that.

BLANTON: Well, I don't know. In my book, "Practicing Radical Honesty," I talk about -- I've been a psychotherapist in Washington, D.C. for over 25 years, and that, as we all know, is the heart bed of truth in the world. And I've talked to lots and lots of people over the years about spin doctoring their image. They think that who they are is their image. Winning the Pulitzer Prize, getting a Ph.D. for him, being a professor at a university are all consistent with the same kind of story making that he did when he went ahead and just wrote the fiction about being in Vietnam. We all do it and we do it all the time.

There was a survey done about eight years ago in a book called "The Day America Told the Truth," and they had 40,000 people interviewed and they were guaranteed anonymity, they were promised that they would never be associated with their answers. And they found in a range of people, ranging from 18 to 60 years of age, interviewed at work, that 93 percent of them admitted that they lied regularly and habitually at work.

In that same study, they found that all of the people that were married in the study, of all of them, 35 percent of them either had had or were currently having an extramarital affair. So I think lying is at epidemic proportions.

And one of my points in my books is that the primary cause of most depression is lying. The primary cause of most anxiety disorders is lying, that people identify themselves as whatever their image is, whatever they're fronting, whatever they're promoting about who they are. And so it's quite consistent with that academic career that he was going on and elaborating the story a little bit more.

BATTISTA: Well, it's interesting that you say that. Let me bring Richard back in now that we've fixed our problems there, because I guess, you know, some people might be able to accept that on a private level that we might be in this epidemic of lying in our personal lives or this sort of thing, but aren't there some areas, Richard, that we would think are somewhat sacred? I mean, we certainly think historians are academics. You know, we want to have trust in corporations and this sort of thing, but I guess nothing is off-limits. SHENKMAN: Well, you know, this was my whole beef with the Clinton mess a couple of years ago where everybody was outraged that a politician was lying to us. Come on. Politicians lie to us all of the time, and I can show you where virtually every one of our presidents except George Washington either deceived us or lied to us in some outrageous way. But historians, scholars, they're in another category. They are protected from so many of the pressures of the modern world, and in return, we should be getting something from that, which is truth, honesty. If you cannot trust a historian to tell his own story properly, how can you trust his history? How do we know that his footnotes, in his footnotes he hasn't lied to us. The whole framework of scholarly papers is based on the assumption that you can trust the person writing.

BATTISTA: So do you think that his publishing career is virtually over at this point? I mean, does this now cast a pall on anything else that he might do or anything that he has done, like the Jefferson book?

SHENKMAN: I think it has cast a pall on it, and he's going to have to answer. So far, he's saying, no, no comment, no comment, no comment. I don't think he can get away with that. Politicians can't get away with it when their lies hit the front papers. I don't think a scholar's lies are any different. They ought to be treated the same way by the media. We ought to be watch-dogging historians in the same way that we watch-dog other people and call them on it. And I don't think he can sit down and just blithely ignore all of this, no. It's got to be -- he's got to answer.

BATTISTA: We do actually have a statement from Professor Ellis that came out today, so if we can put that on the screen. He did apologize and say, "Even in the best of lives, mistakes are made. I deeply regret having let stand and later confirming the assumption that I went to Vietnam. For this and any other distortions about my personal life I want to apologize to my family, friends, colleagues and students. Beyond that circle, however, I shall have no further comment."

That's not enough is what you're saying, Richard?

SHENKMAN: No, I don't think that's enough. Look, let's go back to a few years ago. Remember when Ronald Reagan was making the claim that he personally witnessed concentration camps during World War II? He was there when the camps were liberated. In fact, he was sitting in a Hollywood studio watching Army films of the liberation of the concentration camps. He wasn't there. But he created this myth maybe because he believed it or maybe because he was trying to take a claim in a historic event that he felt was so important to our country and our own history.

But the fact of the matter is we held Ronald Reagan's feet to the fire, and we said, "You know, this is wrong. You can't seem to understand the difference between reality and fantasy, and that's a reflection on your ability to lead." I think the same observations could be made about a scholar. In fact, even more so. BATTISTA: Brad, once the shock wears off, we seem to be a fairly forgiving society when people lie, especially if they admit to it and apologize.

BLANTON: Well, probably. Probably Ellis is due for a bestseller now because he's getting all this free publicity on CNN. And he may come out with a book admitting that he lied and talking about it. What I'd really like to have him to do is tell the truth about -- I'd like for him to tell the truth about the whole -- from kindergarten through Ph.D., how all of us are told all of our lives that who we are the grades we make or what the teacher thinks of us or how well we get along in school or what our peers think of us. After we get out of school, we are how much money we make.

So we're taught consistently by all the institutions, by the media, we're taught to enhance and promote ourselves, and that what our real identity is is whatever we can con anybody else into believing that we are. And actually, we're all guilty of it. I mean, I'm here on this show today to promote my book and promote my image, and that's -- I have a lot more complex character than just being some kind of expert on lying. So we all do it automatically, because we've been taught that who we are is our performance, and that if we can advance our performance, if we can just keep that snow job going, we'll get through it OK. And so it's like an extension of that to go ahead and start confabulating with whatever you think you can get by with.

I've had -- I always like to give a lot of credit to Catholic parochial school because I've had a lot of recovering Catholics in therapy with me because they very, very well have been systematically taught how to lie. They play like they're good little boys and good little girls no matter what. Even though the nuns told them not to lie, they taught them systematically how to lie. And we are all systematically taught how to lie by the way we go through school and the way we live in this culture.

BATTISTA: Well, I just happen to have in the audience today, amazingly enough, college students who are members of the International Honor Society. So let meet get some reaction here.

(APPLAUSE)

BATTISTA: Let me get some reaction first from Robin, who's a professor. Go ahead, Robin.

ROBIN: Hi, I teach biology and chemistry at Eastern Shore Community College in Virginia, and this particular episode has appalled me as a college professor. I think the classroom has to be a place of honesty and integrity, because students put their trust in you as the teacher. And for academic learning, the environment has to be conducive to do just that, learning. And I think honesty and integrity is extremely important.

BATTISTA: I've got to take a break here, but as we go to break here, Matthew in Baton Rouge, Matthew in Baton Rouge says: "Lying is OK sometimes. When your Aunt Lucy asks you if you like the ugly sweater she knitted you, you have to lie."

And Paul in Wisconsin says: "Anyone who says he or she doesn't lie at all just did."

All right, we have to -- we do have to take a break here. Coming up shortly, by the way, we will be breaking away from TALKBACK to bring you Cal Ripken Jr. retirement news conference, and then we'll continue here. But the question today -- I was going to ask you, you know -- Do I look fat in this outfit" -- but I just wasn't going to go there with you folks. So the question is: Have you lied today? Take the TALKBACK LIVE online viewer vote at cnn.com/talkback. AOL key word is CNN.

While there, check out my note, send us an e-mail and be a buddy. Use the AOL Instant Messenger. Those of you who have it, put us on your buddy list. Our name is TALKBACK LIVE. If you don't have it, follow the link on our Web site. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: In 1999, an Owensboro, Kentucky newspaper reporter admitted that she had lied in her series of columns about dying of cancer, saying she actually had AIDS and wanted to avoid that stigma. She later admitted she did not have cancer or AIDS and said she made up her illness to make friends.

BATTISTA: Welcome back. Joining our circle of friends here, Ian Punnett, a seminarian and radio talk show host heard weekly across North America on "Coast-to-Coast AM."

Ian, good to see you.

IAN PUNNETT, SEMINARIAN: I'm intimidated. This may be the smartest audience we have ever had here.

BATTISTA: I know.

(APPLAUSE)

BATTISTA: And I'm guessing the most honest.

PUNNETT: Yes.

BATTISTA: Perhaps the most honest.

PUNNETT: And very honest about how smart they are, too, as you can tell.

BATTISTA: Right. I'm just curious. As a seminarian and sort of an ethicist kind of person, is it really -- is it OK to lie under certain circumstance, or does the commandment just hold firm?

PUNNETT: Well, there are all sorts of ways of looking at it. Certainly, there is the commandment on telling the truth. However, almost every tradition goes into much greater detail on what is and what is not a lie or rather when is it a sin to tell a lie and when are you just simply not truth-telling? And there are some caveats, and I think most religious traditions kind of go into some detail that allow a little wiggle room here in there.

Sort of the classic scenario is: Is it a lie when you're -- if you lied to the Nazis to tell them that you were harboring Jews? Would that be considered a sin? And the answer traditionally is: It is still a lie, but it is not a sin per se, or at least it's a very forgivable sin in that context, because you are harming no one and you are helping someone in the process. And this is where, you know, we get into sort of these grades of lies that can make conversations like these very slippery, especially when it comes to the difference between a personal lie and a corporate lie. And you know, we've had some example in the news of these corporations who have been caught lying.

SHENKMAN: Yeah.

PUNNETT: And there again is a different angle because corporations don't have a soul. In fact some corporations have less of a soul than other corporations, but generally speaking, it's the people who are involved that are really doing the lying, and those are the people that we have to hold responsible.

BATTISTA: Richard, Ian just brought up the whole idea of corporate executives, and I wanted to go a little further with you on the idea of politicians and the fact that we seem to be -- we expect our politicians to lie to some degree. And I'm just curious as to when that became part of our conscious -- political consciousness.

SHENKMAN: Well, the more that reporters ask questions to presidents, the more intensively they scrutinize their behavior, the more the politicians are tempted to lie. Let me just give you a very clear example of this. Until 1880s, until the assassination of James Garfield, reporters never asked presidents about their health, never -- the subject never came up. After Garfield's assassination, when his medical condition became a subject in the news because he lingered for three months before actually succumbing to the attack, people became used to the question of a president's health in the public press, and reporters started asking questions. From that moment on, virtually every single president has either lied or deceived the public about their health. In fact, they've told more lies about their health than about any other subject, including war.

BATTISTA: And then, of course, with Watergate, wasn't that another turning point in many respects, because...

SHENKMAN: Oh, sure, absolutely.

BATTISTA: Yeah.

SHENKMAN: You've got Watergate. You've got Vietnam. You've got Iran-Contra. These three events alone contributed to this incredible amount of cynicism that has just bedeviled the American culture for the last 30 years, 35 years.

PUNNETT: Without a doubt. SHENKMAN: It's a mayonnaise of cynicism out there that you can't cut through. I think a turning point was George Bush Sr.'s lie about raising taxes. When he broke that promise, you know, the famous one about "Read my lips. No new taxes," that was it. Americans used to be believers. With that broken pledge, I think that broke the camel's back, and since then we've become just fundamentally cynical. And it's because our politicians have been lying to us, and lying to us, and lying to us.

I want to add one other thing, though, which is that...

BLANTON: Yeah, let me say something.

SHENKMAN: ... Americans like to lie to themselves, too. It's not just politicians lying to us. We lie to ourselves about our own history.

BLANTON: Yes.

SHENKMAN: If you go to the John Kennedy museum in Boston, you walk through there, you won't find anything about the reality of the kind of the ugly side of the Kennedy administration. And when people come out of there, they're all happy. They only wanted the good side. They didn't want to hear about the negative side about John Kennedy. And we're all like that. We want to hear about the good side.

Let me get Brad in here quickly. Go ahead, Brad. You wanted to say something?

BLANTON: Yeah, I agree completely with if you have Anne Frank in the attic and a Nazi knocks on the door and says, "Are there any Jews?," you should lie. I believe it's critical to your health and well being that you tell the truth to people you work with, everybody you know, your source family, your spouse. It's critical to your health and well being to do so. But if you're in the criminal justice system in the United States of America, lie, hire a lawyer. That's what they're for.

And when it's an institutional representative who's coming down with force -- like I lie to the FBI, for example. I have people with high security clearance, and they send the FBI, and they have a sign for them saying I can tell them the truth about what went on in psychotherapy. And they always ask me the question: To your knowledge, has this person ever used any illegal substances?

And I say, "Not to my knowledge." And I know better.

And then I ask the FBI guy: "Have you ever smoked any marijuana?," he says, no. I say, "OK, we're even now. Go on to the rest of your B.S. questions, because the thing is that personal contact with people, intimacy with people requires telling the truth. It's a presupposition to being nurtured by commonplace experience with other human beings. But with regard to institutional representatives and representations of representations, people begin lying, and then systems get developed that are dependent on lying. The criminal justice system is designed to encourage lying. And, you know, there's so much B.S. it's unbelievable. You can't wade through it all with regard to all of the ideals and ideology about supposedly searching for the truth when in fact the truth is the last thing they're interested in. So I think, personally, it's critical to your health and well being to tell the truth to everyone you know, but it's perfectly acceptable to lie to some representative of, say, the IRS or the FBI or any other Nazi who comes knocking at your door.

PUNNETT: Well I...

(APPLAUSE)

BATTISTA: Nazi.

PUNNETT: I would take exception with some of what you said there, certainly not the premise of saving lives. But there is a certain amount of personal good and gain that can be done, and intent is always going to be central to the act of a lie. But I think there's also something we have to be honest about. If we're going to tell the truth and we have to say in many of our interpersonal relationships, we want to be lied to sometimes. And there is a premise in a relationship where we don't -- we want that other person to reassure us that we're really looking OK today or we really are -- everything's fine, that everything's going to be all right even if sometimes in your heart you don't know if everything's going to be all right or you even doubt it.

BLANTON: Well, I know that you're looking for maintaining a phony relationship there. Authentic intimacy has to be based on telling the truth. And when you ask the phony question -- do you think -- how do you think I look today? -- and you only want one answer, it's a phone question in the first place. And I think that those little white lies, in fact it's the compilation of little white lies that causes depression, causes the alienation that so many people are experiencing. We're in a perennially adolescent society where we're constantly playing roles and posing and we never quite come down to just simply, dumbly telling the truth and just saying what it says, say what we see, say what we feel, and say what we think.

BATTISTA: Ian, hold that thought for a minute. I've got to take a quick break here. We'll be back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: When dealing with a terminally ill cancer patient, only 37 percent of doctors responding to a survey said they would give their patients their best guess about how long he or she had to live. Forty percent said they would give an inaccurate statement, with most giving patients more time than they believed they had. Twenty-three percent said they would give no estimate even when asked.

BATTISTA: All right, a quick e-mail here from Richard in New Jersey: "Lies infuriate me. Most people I know who are habitual liars are so to prop up their own shortcomings and create a Walter Middy existence. The only justification I can think of to lie is to spare someone a great deal of pain or anxiety, such as a child with an incurable disease."

Steven on the phone from California, go ahead.

CALLER: Hello.

BATTISTA: Hi.

CALLER: Yes, I'm thinking, you know, that it's a cause-and- effect thing. If lies are the cause, then the effect is the breakdown in the morals and the ethics in this country.

BATTISTA: So -- and by the way, if we keep accepting certain kinds of lies, you know, as OK, then what is that doing to our national fabric, so to speak?

PUNNETT: Well, and that's an excellent point. I mean, there is always going to be this cause and effect where you're going to have a professor who doesn't tell the truth, and therefore, students might be more likely to falsify their research on a paper, or they might be more inclined to commit plagiarism because they figure, "This role model in my life, they did this. Well, then how bad can it be?" And that is true.

But I would caution that caller to think that this is some sort of contemporary issue that's just happened in the last 25 years. You go back to your ancient writers of Greece, they were addressing this issue. Obviously, there wouldn't have been a need for a commandment on this 5,000 years or so ago if it people weren't lying then. And then here you have some of the most famous treatises on this subject written by St. Augustin in the Christian tradition 1,650 years ago, and he was writing on lying and against lying to try to for the first time ever categorize all the different types of lies so that people understood what they were doing.

BATTISTA: Richard, you want to jump in there?

SHENKMAN: Well, I do, and I want to bring it back to Joe Ellis for a minute. There is a difference between trying to understand why somebody lied and then the moral position that we take about lying. Ellis himself wrote in his biography of Thomas Jefferson a very nuanced portrait, trying to help the reader come to grips with all of the complexity and contradictions of Jefferson. In fact, his reviewers constantly noted that Ellis had this wonderfully nuanced approach to Jefferson, so we didn't just moralistically, sanctimoniously condemn him when he would say one thing and do another, and that's part of his brilliance as a scholar.

At the same time, when we're talking about, did Thomas Jefferson lie -- yes, he did, and you can make a moral judgment about that. If somebody ever writes a biography of Joe Ellis, and now it's looking like it'll be more likely than not, we will have to try to account for why Ellis told these lies. But I think that should be distinguished from a basic national commitment that we don't want to tolerate lies.

BATTISTA: Let me go to the audience here quickly, and, Carrie Ann. CARRIE ANN: As a student, I find that one of my closest relationships now is with my professor. When I enter a classroom I have an open mind. What they give me, I try to take in and I accept it. I not only accept it, I embrace it, and I want to learn as much as I can. And when I hear about a professor who is lying, it kind of -- I don't know, it makes me worry that some of his students may come in and start to close their minds or be a little pessimistic about what teachers are telling them. So I think that's a big concern to have.

(APPLAUSE)

BATTISTA: I have to take a quick break again here, so we'll continue in just a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: All right, welcome back. On the phone with us now is Sharon in Texas. Sharon, go ahead.

CALLER: Hi, Bobbie.

BATTISTA: Hi.

CALLER: I just want to say to this Audrey that sent in the e- mail that said lying is no big deal: It can be a big deal. About six years ago I was going with a guy at work. He was my boss, which is strange enough as it is. But he got to telling me that people were talking at work, that he was showing more favoritism toward me, and that we better break up. Well, come to find out -- it took me about three years to find out -- he really wanted to break up. He just lied and said it was people at work were, you know -- and lying can hurt. If he had told me the truth...

BATTISTA: I think most -- you know, we were talking about the differences in lies, and I think we were talking about those that are deceitful, and those that are meant to hurt other people are not acceptable to the bulk of our society today.

Let me say something about that.

BATTISTA: Yes, well, I don't -- you know what? Go ahead, Brad.

BLANTON: Yes, I think that we all -- the biggest rationalization for lying that I ever hear is I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. And the second biggest rationalization is I didn't want to offend anybody. And I recommend that you be contactful enough with people that you go ahead and hurt their feelings, but stay with them until they get over it. It doesn't take very long.

And you can offend people and stay with them until they get over being offended, because that's what real friends do. What happens is you can be more intimate with people by going ahead and hurting their feelings, but staying in there with it until they get over it. It doesn't take very long. BATTISTA: Does it depend, then, on how you say it? In other words, you know, if you say: "Do I look fat in these pants?" is it better for the person to say: "Yeah, you look fat in those pants," or "gee, I think something else might look better on you"?

BLANTON: No, I think you better say just exactly what your opinion is. We overvalue opinions. Opinions are not really anything but more B.S. -- all of it, all opinions. What -- we're all sort of trapped in opinions. We're kind of like the computer programmer that died in the shower. He read the shampoo, it said wet hair, lather, rinse, repeat. So he shampooed himself to death. And that's what we're all doing. We're all running around shampooing ourselves to death with some kind of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) about how we should never hurt anyone's feelings, we should never offend anybody.

I promise you, a life lived where you never offend anybody and never hurt anyone's feelings is a life not worth living. It's is a life of depression, anxiety. It's a life of no contacts, a life of alienation. Go ahead and tell the truth, hurt each other's feelings, get over it, and go on. We can learn forgiveness a whole lot better when we're honest. We can't learn it at all when we're lying.

And I'm sure that you and the six or seven wives that you've been through at this point...

(LAUGHTER)

BATTISTA: I'm sorry, we have to interrupt here quickly to go take you to the Cal Ripken Jr. news conference. We'll return in a few moments.

(INTERRUPTED BY LIVE EVENT)

BATTISTA: Cal Ripken Jr., we should say. There is somebody we can look up to.

BLANTON: I want to say something about Cal.

BATTISTA: Uh-huh, go ahead.

BLANTON: I think, you know, what's so level about Cal Ripken is he's just an honest guy. He's just a straightforward, honest guy. And it makes us all love him, because he's just straight out, he answers honestly. He's just an honest person. I think nobody could underline our point better than the way he just told how he made up his mind. I think it was just great.

PUNNETT: Well, you know, I think it is important at the end of the day here, that we always recognize when we are lying. To know that we have lied, to hold ourselves accountable for those lies, and to never confuse the fact that we told a lie just because it felt like truth to us at the time, even though we knew that it wasn't. And that having been said, I want to say, this is the best-looking audience ever in the history of TALKBACK LIVE.

(APPLAUSE) BATTISTA: Let me get a final thought, here, Richard, on all of this, and whether or not you historians out there are, you know, concerned about the professor Ellis thing, even casting any aspersions on the rest of you, even. But...

SHENKMAN: Well, I'm sure that that's on the mind of every historian today as they're reading the stories about what Ellis did. What's remarkable here is that usually the truth that historians deal with is so flexible. It's hard to establish truth in history, because the evidence usually is incomplete, or sometimes you're dealing with fabricated documents that make it difficult to establish the truth. But here we have a nice, clean -- we know what the truth is. And it's shocking.

BATTISTA: Let me go to the audience quickly for some last comments. Up here to Steve.

STEVE: To me, it all comes down to a battle between credibility and competitiveness. As long as we live in a competitive society, if we tell a lie and it hurts our credibility, that's one thing. But of we're continually losing out to others who may gain that advantage by lying, I'm not sure how pragmatic or practical it will be to experience radical honesty.

PUNNETT: And I think Brad has a good message, but we should remember, too, that even though Euell Gibbons lived his life on pine cones, he still died at a fairly early age, and sometimes radical doesn't pay off quite like Brad promises, but I applaud your sincerity.

BLANTON: What we say about radical honesty is, radical honesty works pretty good most of the time.

BATTISTA: And Cathy in the audience.

BLANTON: That's the first honest commercial.

CATHY: I really am glad we have an ethicist, because my feeling is we don't recognize honor anymore because we don't teach shame anymore, and I wonder what his opinion was of that.

BLANTON: I don't believe teaching shame is a great value. I advocate honesty for purely pragmatic reasons, not for high moral principles. I don't have any high moral principles. I have low moral principles. I recommend that you tell the truth because your life works better, you're happier, you have more love, you have more affection. You have a lot happier life. You can pay attention to your life, rather than be preoccupied with things of the mind. And you get a freedom to relate to other people and to honor them as beings, and you get a quality of life that's much greater. It's for purely pragmatic reasons that it's better to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may, and be radically honest so you can have power and intimacy in your life.

PUNNETT: Well, and I think that there is truth in that, and it's very important to remember. But it's also important to remember the connection between the heart and the mouth, and there are times when we talk about shame, we talk about the emphasis we're going to put on kids on learning what is wrong -- that many times, kids are still learning by what we do. And so we have to set the example for them to live by, and not just shame them when they get it wrong.

(APPLAUSE)

BLANTON: I agree.

BATTISTA: And a phone call from Arizona -- William, go ahead.

CALLER: Hi, Bobbie. My comments about this subject is I think lying sometimes could be appropriate when you're talking to a family member or something, to keep them from having a problem with what's going on in school or something. But when in public, like in the recent things you've heard in the news about the Sony review thing, I think lying could be damaging in the long run if done improperly. Lying is very dangerous, and if unchecked, could mess things up.

Well, I think you need to tell the truth in your family, and that there's no -- lying done properly or not properly is again, a distinction that's very, very hard to figure out. I think for all the people that you're personally related, it's critical that you tell the truth in your family, even if it hurts people's feelings.

(CROSSTALK)

BATTISTA: And I'm telling the truth -- I'm running out of time, but a final e-mail from Nick in Wisconsin, who says: "Without lying, you couldn't go fishing."

(LAUGHTER)

BATTISTA: All right, Richard Shenkman, Brad Blanton, Ian Punnett, thank you all so much for joining us. Thank you for being with us as well. We'll see you again tomorrow for more TALKBACK LIVE.

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