Stretching the truth may well be a common failing among run-of-the-mill mortals as most of us are. When an auto salesman goes to work on a prospect, he says the engine moves the car from zero to sixty in record time while it burns almost no fuel at all. He may say that when there are six people aboard, the car can pull a ten ton trailer. The vacuum cleaner salesman says his brand will clean everything and keep beer cold. The people who ask for donations will say that you are supporting a cause that will bring world peace. Soldiers have been known to exaggerate as have politicians. So it is fair to contend that those of us who have our share of failings may exaggerate from time to time.
In this little essay, we are going to be discussing gross exaggeration from men who are supposed to be icons or imams of the truth. There are those truth stretchers that will surprise some or many of you. One is Bill Stern, a sports commentator on radio and television several years back. The second is a pastor of a large Presbyterian church near here. The third stretcher is – or was – the Attorney General of the United States. For the time being, the Chief Executive of the U.S., the champion prevaricator of our time, will be ignored.
Now to Bill Stern. Fame in the sports world is a fleeting phenomenon. People may chant your exploits today, but in a period of months, those same fans may have trouble recalling your name. Stern appeared on weekly network radio and television from 1937 through 1956. As television grew more popular and widespread, my recollection is that Stern moved from radio to television around 1952. Television consumes mountains of material. Stern soon faltered as he tried to present one miracle after another.
Bill Stern often employed the device of where-are-yesterday’s-heroes-now. In this case, it should be recalled that during the period when Stern’s career was at its zenith, the Kentucky Derby was one of America’s major sporting events. Today it doesn’t grab nearly as much public attention unless an unknown horse wins the races preceding the Kentucky Derby. Earlier, it was one of the most anticipated sporting events.
It might be imagined that the story of a winner of the Derby hastened the end of Stern’s career. In this case, Stern said he was in Paris. After a long night of eating and drinking French wine, he strolled on the Champs Élysées on the way to his hotel. Stern said that a horse drawn garbage cart was collecting refuse from the street. Any objective observer would question why Paris, one of the world’s great cities, was using horse drawn garbage carts in an age of large, motorized trucks. Stern was not bothered by this failing in factual matters.
Stern said he watched the horse with great fascination because he thought the horse’s gait seemed to be familiar. Finally, like a thunder clap, Stern remembered that the gait of the horse pulling the garbage cart was identical to the winner of the Kentucky Derby some years earlier.
My memory of that broadcast was that Bill Stern asked the garbage man to stop for a minute or two. He looked at the horses teeth which led him to believe he was on the right track. Then, in English, Stern called the name of the horse. The horse responded affirmatively. Perhaps he winked his eye or wiggled his ears, but Stern had his story. The Kentucky Derby winner of a few years ago was now pulling a garbage cart in Paris.
With stories of exaggeration like that, it is a wonder that Stern lasted as long as he did. In the minds of sports fans such as myself, Stern was marked off as a deceitful prevaricator who told impossible-to-believe stories. The fact that the horse in question was retired in Kentucky, eating large quantities of organic grass and oats and accommodating lady horses in his capacity as a stud, did not seem to bother Stern when the facts were uncovered. Stern had moved on to the next story.
The Radio Hall of Fame has this to say about Stern: “He told tales of sports legends and strange occurrences waiting for the climax. Although some of his reports stretched the limits of credibility, no one doubted that Stern was a master story teller…”
Bill Stern died in 1971 and has moved on to his heavenly reward. It may possibly be that his fellow angels may not have heard about the Kentucky Derby winner and the Paris garbage cart. When one thinks of heaven and angels, this writer of essays also thinks of a young preacher of the Presbyterian persuasion who has Stern’s inclinations.
This fellow calls himself “Reverend Rich” which was shorthand for Richard. His last name is of German origin and would take up too much space in what is envisioned as a short essay. His last name is neither here nor there in any case. Reverend Rich came in 2001 to preside over the affairs of the Presbyterian Church in Summit, New Jersey, an affluent town. Today, March 6th, Reverend Rich preached his last sermon in as much as he “had answered a call” to perform his priestly offices in San Antonio, Texas. Your old essayist is largely or totally unaware of ecclesiastical gossip, so it is impossible to tell you whether he “answered a call” or whether he was pushed. In any case, Presbyterians in Summit, N.J. will no longer be led by the likes of Reverend Rich.
Prior to the hiring of Reverend Rich, the church in Summit had been without a permanent pastor for at least two years. One way or another, the pastor picking process of the Presbyterian Church produced the name of Reverend Rich after a lengthy search. When he came to Summit, he was barely 30 years old. It could be argued that members of the church were anxious to end the pastor search, so they accepted a young Texan who had attended the Princeton Theological Seminary.
The members of this household are not affiliated with any church; however, they are interested in good choral music. As things have worked out, the services at the Summit Presbyterian Church are telecast starting at the curious hour of 9:45 AM on Sunday mornings. We usually get a late start on Sundays what with wrestling the New York Times, so we often listen to the proceedings mainly involving the choir.
When Reverend Rich begins to preach his sermon, it is possible only to listen to the opening bars until contempt and disbelief set in and the television set is turned off. Our main observation is that Reverend Rich’s sermons are juvenile in content and character. Perhaps for a preacher in his early 30’s, who seems to have no other work experiences, that is to be expected. It seems to me that as a child, Reverend Rich would want to play being a preacher. In effect, he is still at it.
For example, Reverend Rich and his wife became convinced that people served by their church were so debt ridden as to invite poverty or bankruptcy. To solve this monstrous debt problem, the Reverend and his wife offered a plan for “the Biblical” management of money. For a year or so, the congregation was encouraged – or harangued – to meet with the pastor and his wife and to lay all their financial cards on the table. A “biblical solution” would then be produced after fervent prayer, and it must be supposed, a dedication to tithing.
It made no difference to Reverend Rich and his wife that they were serving in an upscale church in one of the most affluent towns in the New York City suburbs. His congregants would most likely have included representatives from the New York banking and investment community. And here were Reverend Rich and his wife, with no financial credentials at all to their credit, telling captains of industry how their financial fortunes would prosper if they adopted a biblical system of management of their assets. All it took was laying all your financial assets out to two young people with no credentials of any kind.
This endeavor went on for about a year. From all appearances, the congregants had no faith in the biblical management of assets. It was a gross misreading of his congregation.
The misreading of his congregant’s debt situation may have set the scene for Reverend Rich having a Bill Stern moment. At his age, with so little experience behind him, the Reverend sorely lacked gravitas. His sermons and his remarks lacked maturity. In one recitation of his past accomplishments, he sought to tell a story that would resonate with his listeners as wisdom gathered by Reverend Rich as he intended to bring the gospel to every willing ear.
According to the Reverend, he recalled an incident from his early preaching days. In this case, he was preaching to an audience that included some homeless men. If my understanding is basically correct, the homeless men were to be fed after hearing Reverend Rich’s sermon. He told us of the hours he had spent in preparing and rehearsing the sermon. But once it had been delivered, he felt it had missed the mark, somehow.
With the sermon delivered, Reverend Rich took his disillusioned self to join the line waiting to be served food. My recollection is that he asked the homeless man standing next to him what he had thought of the sermon. Instantly, the homeless man told Reverend Rich, “You should have talked more about Jesus.”
Old Rich’s ears shot up as he asked the homeless man why he had offered this comment. Now here is the Bill Stern moment. The homeless man said, “I know a little about preaching. I am a graduate of the Princeton Theological Seminary.” That, of course, is Reverend Rich’s alma mater. So on his next trip to Princeton, he looked up the man’s record and found that indeed, the man was a graduate of the Seminary, or so we were told.
Bill Stern found a Kentucky Derby winner pulling a garbage cart in Paris while Reverend Rich found a homeless man eating handouts who shared his own educational background. Reverend Rich dropped the story after meeting the homeless man in the line for food. He did not say if he joined the man in the handout meal. Nothing was said about how a student can attend Princeton Theological Seminary, where tuition fees must be substantial, only to wind up walking the streets shelterless. And for a man apparently well educated, whatever happened to the admonition of St. Luke, Chapter 4, Verse 23, “Physician, heal they self”?
Old Reverend Rich has gone back to Texas. If he knows whatever happened to the homeless man, he is not saying. Was he real or was it an imagined meeting? We just don’t know. All we can say is, “Reverend Rich, please meet Bill Stern.”
When our elaborate Commander in Chief – Chief Executive was elected by the Scalia-led Supreme Court back in the year 2000, he expressed great admiration for one of Missouri’s senators. Unfortunately in the 2000 election, the incumbent John Ashcroft was opposed by Mel Carnahan who was killed in a plane crash. His wife took Carnahan’s place and defeated Ashcroft who had been eyed by Bush as a
Vice Presidential possibility.
Ashcroft served in the first Bush administration. His tenure was marked by the most asserted assault on American civil liberties in history. When the first term ended, Ashcroft was told his services would no longer be needed. In effect, he was fired so that Bush could put his lackey Alberto Gonzales into the Attorney General slot. Gonzales, you may recall, was one of the main movers of the effort to torture prisoners caught up in Bush’s Iraqi invasion.
Ashcraft was fired. There is no polite way to state this fact. In that circumstance, the thing to do is to pack your desk set and memo pads and head back to Missouri. Ah, but that’s for ordinary people. Clinging to some hope of respectability, Ashcroft hand wrote a five page letter of resignation. To say his resignation letter was superfluous is a gross understatement.
But Ashcroft is not to be outdone by the likes of Bill Stern and Reverend Rich. In the sixth paragraph of his longhand letter, Ashcroft makes the following mystical statement:

“The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.”

Old Ashcroft is off his rocker. If the “securing of safety” is a fact, why do we read every day about impingements upon our tranquility? If we are secured “from crime and terror,” why are we fighting an ill gotten war in Iraq? Ashcroft’s own department is prosecuting crimes from Tyco to MCI to Enron. Free from crime? Ashcroft is smoking something.
And so, faithful readers, Ashcroft has my fervent nomination to enter either the Liars Hall of Fame or heaven as a triplet entry along with
Bill Stern and Reverend Rich. It is inspirational to me to know that exaggeration is still in style. In the WorldCom case just last week,
Bernie Ebbers, the Chairman, said he knew nothing about technology or finances. When he was reminded that he approved a two billion dollar write down for WorldCom stock, he had great difficulty in recalling that event. So as you can see, exaggeration works well going up or going down. That fact is of great comfort to those of us who say, “Did he say that?” Well yes, he really did! When Bill Stern died, we thought we had seen the last of the dubious and deceitful exaggerators. Apparently, this is not the case.
E. E. CARR
March 7, 2005
~~~
Why bother with boring, everyday reality when you can invent your own reality? Trump’s reality has millions of immigrants swarming over the borders and voting in our elections by the millions. He swears it was a sunny day during his inauguration speech, while the cameras say differently. He claimed for years that Obama was a Muslim. And now, after this and much more, his newest call is to distrust the entire media, with the exceptions of Breitbart and Fox. If those are his main sources of information, god knows what he’ll believe tomorrow. I’d love to hear him tell stories of Kentucky Derby winners in Paris, or even claim “Mission accomplished” in the war on terror. Instead he’ll be pointlessly spinning the government’s wheels to investigate non-existent election fraud, and building a multi-billion dollar wall. Trump’s delusions are about to get pretty expensive. I guess the bright side is that he hasn’t declared war on anyone yet?