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Big public lies are so common in our culture, particularly in the culture industries. And the liars rarely get called on it. As when NBC this past season was plummeting from #1 in the ratings to #4, and Bob Wright, the company chairman, said that he wasn't upset -- that, "it's good to see that shows [on other networks] are really popping good numbers." Or after Tavis Smiley walked away from his NPR show and criticized NPR for its extreme whiteness, and the network spokesperson responded, "We have only the most positive feelings about Tavis."
Sure they do.
A few years ago, Columbia Pictures was caught in a lie. Columbia's lie was both absurdly extravagant and extremely petty. And, maybe most hilarious and pathological of all, completely unnecessary.
You know the gushy blurbs from reviewers that appear in movie ads? Like "another winner!" and "this year's hottest new star!" Well, back in 2000 and 2001, a Columbia marketing executive decided he wanted just one more really gushy quote to stick in the newspaper ads for some of his new releases. So he invented movie critics, and invented raves, including "another winner!" and "this year's hottest new star!" And he did that for a whole year, for five different Columbia movies, before anyone noticed.
After this little fraud was exposed, some people who had gone to those movies filed a class action suit in California , claiming that they had been hoodwinked by the phony blurbs into seeing A Knight's Tale and Hollow Man and several other movies.
In fighting the lawsuit, the Sony Corporation, which owns Columbia , compounded their original sin egregiously: their lawyers said that the fake quotes were constitutionally protected free speech.
Happily, that argument did not fly. And I was amused to see last week that the plaintiffs have now triumphed -- Sony settled the suit. So if you are one of the millions of people who saw any of those movies, you can file a claim for $5 for every ticket you bought.
As it happens, I bought four tickets to one of the movies - it was The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson. Therefore I'm now legally entitled to twenty bucks from Sony.
I don't think I'll file a claim. And not just because it isn't worth the hassle. Or because I'm for tort reform -- I love seeing Sony forced to pay.
No, my problem is what asking for my money back would imply. It would mean -- as the people who sued claimed with straight faces -- that I took my family to see a movie on the say-so of someone who didn't exist and whom I'd never heard of, that I trusted a fictional character's fictional opinion.
Which would make me a moron. Or a liar.
