REPUTATION IS EVERYTHING

It happened decades ago, and my memory of the details are sketchy, but the gist of it is this: I was once accused at a job of ratting out my colleagues to the boss. 

It wasn't true. In fact, the guy who ratted me out was himself the real ratter. And I barely knew him.

Up until then, I was known as a stand-up guy. Following the false accusation, my reputation was pretty much shot among all but those who knew me best.

The moral of the story: Once you lose your good name, it's difficult to retrieve.

Gifted liar?

Fast-forward to 2015. Ben Carson, Republican candidate for president, is angry at CNN for smearing his reputation. In fact, he claims that the network is accusing him of being "a pathological liar." 

According to accepted definitions of the word, the best spin you can put on "pathological" is "compulsive; obsessive." At worst, it involves "a mental disease." And since he's a doctor, he must know from whence he speaks.

CNN, if you believe Carson, has a lot to answer for in its investigative report concerning certain passages of his autobiography Gifted Hands. "The media is ruthless," he told Megyn Kelly on Fox News, adding, "This is a smear campaign" and "just garbage."

So what is CNN's smear job? They question Carson's claims of his childhood misbehavior, which include:

punching a classmate in the face with his hand wrapped around a lock, leaving a bloody three-inch gash in the boy's forehead; attempting to attack his own mother with a hammer following an argument over clothes; hurling a large rock at a boy, which broke the youth's glasses and smashed his nose; and, finally, thrusting a knife at the belly of his friend with such force that the blade snapped when it luckily struck a belt buckle covered by the boy's clothes. "I was trying to kill somebody," Carson said...

Carson also stands by his belief that the ancient pyramids were built by Biblical supporting player Joseph to store grain. And that "[America would] be Cuba if there were no Fox News."  And that the theory of evolution is satanic. And, most famously, that Obamacare "is the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery."

Carson, therefore, is trying to protect his reputation as a violent juvenile delinquent with "a pathological temper" (which is apparently better than being a "pathological liar"), along with being a bogus Biblical scholar, ridiculous sociologist, terrible scientist and just plain bad historian. 

Clearly, he's got the nomination in the bag.

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