So remember the Katrina story that Bobby Jindal told? Yeah, he was lying.
I’m frankly surprised by this, though I shouldn’t be. Sarah Palin introduced herself to America by lying, too. I suppose when you’re a Republican, lying is preferable to admitting that your party is completely bereft of ideas, and that your core principles have been proven wanting by reality. Even so, one would think Jindal could have found a different, less-false anecdote to use. I think you can scratch the man from Baton Rouge off the short list for 2012. Somewhere, Mittens is smiling.
Thanks for tracking that down. I was sitting in my living room and actually asid to my husband “I call bullshit” nice to be right sometimes even if it’s sad!
Curious story. What to make of it?
Yes, it appears Jindal may have embellished an anecdote to exaggerate his own role in a time of crises. No, this does not reflect well on his candor.
That said, I’ve done this same thing. That is, I’ve use an anecdote to make a point. And when telling the anecdote, I put myself in the thick of the action – sometimes even telling the story in first person – simply for the sake of drama. After all, the photo of the guys raising the flag at Iwo Jima was staged, but no one disputes that the story of Iwo Jima was real. What’s the harm?
Some possibilities:
Harm 1: He’s lying. Lying is bad.
Harm 2: He’s self-aggrandizing. That is, he’s lying not for the benefit of his audience (providing a livelier story), but to promote his own benefit at other people’s expense.
Harm 3. He’s exaggerating the story’s credibility. The story about sheriff might be different from what Jindal says, but the fact that Jendal tells it in the first person gives the account an air of first-person testimony.
Harm 4. He’s distorting a story to cause it to demonstrate a point that a more accurate account would not demonstrate, or would even contradict.
I sense the people at Talking Point Memo are mostly crowing about Harm 1 (“Maybe we all embellish stories for dramatic effect – but we don’t all get caught at it!”) and Harm 2 (“Maybe we all puff our resumes – but we don’t all get caught at it!”)
I find Harm 2 especially curious. Because, what is self-aggrandizing about this story, anyway? Why would anyone give a rat’s ass whether Jindal was actually standing in a sheriff’s office during Katrina or not? For that matter, why would we care if Bush landed an aircraft on an aircraft carrier, or whether Kennedy went to Berlin? The idea that a politician’s physical location or personal drama is somehow relevant to evaluating his role as a political strikes me as curious.
In contrast, I care most about Harm 4. That is, I care less that what Jindal says is true than that the conclusion Jindal wants to disseminate flows from the premise.
So, did Harm 4 occur? Dunno; I don’t know how accurate the story is. But moreover, I’m having trouble determine what the point of the story was. Individual initiative can accomplish some good things? Government can do some bad things? We can rely on individual initiative, so we needn’t worry so much about government services? All in all, these are pretty tepid conclusions. The anecdote seems more entertaining than informative.
Lying is not a talent restricted to republicans . . . recall the Hillary Clinton anecdote about gunfire all around her as she was getting off a plane in Bosnia in 1996. Seems that that would fall in the “Harm 2” category . . .