The difference between a reason and an excuse.
Kasey Anderson steps into the confessional
“I was at the point where I believed that Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga were gonna do a duet. And I had emailed the people in the little investor group saying as much like, this, oh we okay, it's locked in Springsteen and Gaga gonna do a duet. And they were like, "oh, wow, that's incredible, let's see the contract." And so then then I'm confronted with like, oh, I don't have this contract. So then I just forged like I knew who managed Springsteen, I knew who managed Gaga, I know what a contract looks like. So I just forged one and sent it off and was like, there you go. It's locked in.”
In 2004, district superintendent Frank Tassone was arrested and charged with embezzling millions of dollars from his Long Island public school system.
Now, I am no expert in white collar crime in America, but I AM an expert in watching basically everything on HBO, which includes the 2019 film, Bad Education, based on this case and starring Hugh Jackman as Tassone. The performances are stunning and the story engaging, but the uncomfortable thing about this movie for me wasn't the crime that was committed, although of course, boys and girls, stealing is bad – it was the lies that had to be told about the lies in order to not be caught in a lie. The discomfort I feel from these kinds of stories differs from the discomfort I feel watching, say, torture scenes, although of course, torture is bad. What’s different is that I’ve never once tied someone to a chair and then broken their fingers. But I have most certainly lied.
Of course, lying is bad. It’s also something that academics like Dan Ariely from Duke University happen to study.
In a lecture I watched, Ariely said of lying, “It’s not about being bad, it’s about being human.”
At the very end of Bad Education there is a scene where Jackman’s character finally fesses up to how it all started.
“It started,” he said, “with two Greek salads and a couple fountain drinks,” he said. “I fucked up. I used the wrong card by accident” He planned to settle up on Monday when he returned to the office but nobody noticed or even cared really and so he didn't and That’s how it started.
Ariely’s research about dishonesty shows that the brain reacts very strongly to a first act of lying – but then it adjusts – the subsequent lying registers less and less. That adjustment is disturbing to me.
I honestly don't know what to make of all of this, but I do know . . . we all lie.
Sometimes it’s noble – we lie to protect someone else, sometimes it’s selfish - we lie to get what we want, sometimes it’s ego - we lie to make ourselves look good.
My guest in The Confessional this week has his own story of dishonesty and other people’s money, and he too, never intended to do what he did over the course of a few years and it started with something so small. Small enough to make me fidget in my chair.
Some pertinent links:
Kasey’s story involves The West Memphis Three
I’ve mentioned Damien Echols before
This powerful video uses Kasey’s song, Dangerous Ones. I commend it to you.
Join me and Kasey for a live chat!
Friday Aug 28th, 6p PST/ 7p MST/ 8p CST/ 9p EST Kasey and I will have a chat live on my Instagram. Just click on the circle with my image on the upper left. Join us!
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I just found this podcast via armchair experts. I love it so much. I binged all of them in 2 days. I can't even begin to explain how hearing these stories has helped me take steps in forgiving myself.
I really loved the juxtaposition of this episode with your conversation with Darin in episode 2 who talked about the guilt that he felt when there was no reason, technically, for guilt. Just the idea that life is so much more about AND than either/or.