This Week in Liars

At the end of a week defined by llamas, dresses, and Oscars recaps, we'd like to review the past seven days as measured in lies and the lying liars who tell them...allegedly. 1. Bill O'Reilly This one just never seems to end. Did O'Reilly exaggerate his own experiences in The Falklands and other places (the L.A. riots, the suicide of a Kennedy acquaintance, a murder of nuns)? Obviously. Do his viewers or his employer care? No; his ratings have improved and his company stands behind him. Is his case in any way comparable to that of Brian Williams? Not really. Will his career survive? Of course it will. No one turns to him for objectivity. Next... 2. Monica Seles When the former tennis star recently made the media rounds to discuss her experience with binge eating, she said that it was all about "[raising] awareness that binge eating is a real medical condition." This may well be true, but she should have followed Vanessa Bayer's lead and said "I get a big fat check every time I say 'Vyvanse by Shire.'" A New York Times report this week noted that the company, which won approval to use the amphetamine to treat the condition before hiring Seles to promote it, also happens to be the first to market binge eating as a treatable disorder. Amphetamines have been used -- dangerously -- to treat weight problems for decades. And we wonder why Big Pharma has such a poor reputation... 3. HSBC Executives at the financial institution recently revealed that it had suffered "reputational damage" after various reports uncovered a completely unsurprising history of tax evasion on behalf of wealthy international clients. In a call to discuss a big drop in earnings, chief executive Steve Gulliver said, "We have absolutely no appetite to do business with customers that are evading taxes." Of course that's true NOW, because they got caught. But we can see his nose growing through the screen. 4. Vladimir Putin Putin's advisors, both Eastern and Western, primarily concern themselves with his business affairs -- but they might want to try and teach him how not to be so obvious when he's lying. Our two political parties don't agree on much, but Secretary of State John Kerry and Senator Lindsay Graham shared a laugh this week when discussing how they both know that Putin isn't telling the truth when he says there are no Russian troops in Ukraine. Hint: it's because his lips are moving. 5. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald Pic via Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press As a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed put it, you'd think that the Secretary of Veteran Affairs of all people would know better than to lie about his military experience. Nope. Of course he "never intended to misrepresent his military service" by claiming that he was a member of the special forces... But as a public servant, he has a greater responsibility than almost anyone else to tell the truth. Careers have been destroyed over far less. 6. Wei-Hock Soon Sure, the fossil fuels industry's favorite "expert" on climate change conveniently failed to mention the fact that the very same industry has paid more than a million dollars for his scientific papers over the last few years. But there's no way they're not interested in telling the absolute truth, right? Besides, as Representative James Inhofe (who also happens to receive more than his share of donations from the oil and gas industries) showed us with a single snowball, climate change is the biggest hoax of the past century. Case closed. 7. Kanye West Kanye may well have been telling the truth when he apologized to Beck and Bruno Mars for hating on them. And he might not be lying, per se, in this BBC interview, in which he expresses his desire to prove that he can "create outside the hip-hop box" before breaking down and crying. But based on various critical responses to his recent attempts at fashion, we don't know that anyone believes him. 8. Robert Durst On a final note, has anyone else been following the HBO series Jinx, about Durst's success in evading prosecution for multiple murders over a period of more than 20 years? We find it fascinating to watch him blink as he lies repeatedly on national television. President Frank Underwood would almost certainly ask: why doesn't this man run for office? It's a case study in sociopathic behavior without consequence. Now who did we miss?

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This Week in Liars

8 people who made headlines this week for not telling the truth.

Patrick Coffee

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Patrick Coffee