October 2004 | Hightower Lowdown
A Cellphone Club for Liars & Cheats
by Jim Hightower
Excellent news, Americans: A new way to lie!
In a nation that’s gone from the simple childhood fibs of “my dog ate my homework” to the far more nefarious lies of a White House that has sent hundreds of people to die in Iraq on the false claims that Saddam Hussein was about to hit us with weapons of mass destruction ... now we have new technology to extend the culture of lying to anyone with a cell phone.
Yes, cell phones not only allow you to make calls, keep track of your kid’s whereabouts, and even take photographs, but also to join cells of cellphone liars who’ll help you cheat on your spouse, skip work, or ... you name it.
Take the “alibi and excuse club,” a network of some 3,400 subscribers — unknown to each other — who’re willing to lie for you, in exchange for you lying for them when they’re in a pinch. Say you want to slip away for a weekend with a lover. What to tell your spouse? No problem. Just send out a message to the “alibi and excuse” group, and you’re likely to get a volunteer who’ll call your spouse, posing as one of your bosses and explaining that you’ve been dispatched on an emergency sales mission to New York or Paris or Kalamazoo. You pay a fee to join the club, and you’re also under some general obligation to return the favor when other members put out the call for a credible lie.
Jumping on an entrepreneurial opportunity, others have found ways to add value to the lying phone schemes. For $2.99, for example, you can equip your cell phone to play the sounds of a rasping cough to simulate a lung infection — while you’re sitting on the beach sipping a cool one! You can also get honking horns and a screaming ambulance to simulate a traffic jam, thus explaining why you can’t get home — while you’re actually chilling at a bar and watching the game.
Of course, there could be glitches — such as if your spouse joins the same alibi club and inadvertently takes your call for help in creating a lie so you can have an affair. Ouch.
Jim Hightower is the best-selling author of Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush, from Viking Press. For more information, visit jimhightower.com.
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