Dispatches from the Culture Wars

You can hear an interview with George Deutsche, the boy wonder who just resigned from NASA because he lied on his resume about having graduated from Texas A&M, here. It's pretty funny stuff. I especially like his defense of having lied on his resume.

Host: Was it public, I mean, it was pretty much known when you were at the Bush campaign, when you were working for the Bush campaign, that you had left school to come work for the Bush campaign.

Deutsche: It was known that I, uh, was an undergrad when I was with the Bush campaign. It was known that I was an undergrad when I worked for the inaugural committee. When NASA hired me, they knew that I was an undergrad. The only real, uh, the only room here for misinterpretation could be my resume. And I, you know, if there, if my resume is misleading, I take responsibility for that, no question, I do. Um, and I didn't never mean for that to happen. But I have never ever lied about my status, I have never tried to misrepresent that to anyone. If my resume was misleading, I take, I take responsibility, but that's not it, it's not about my resume. It's about this larger issue, it's about the agenda of global warming, and how these people are willing to resort to smearing a 24 year old junior appointee in an effort to just get one step ahead in their agenda, to get a little bit more face time in the media.

He then goes on to claim that he resigned on his own not because of the lies on his resume but because "I was being smeared, my integrity and credibility were being questioned, and as a human being, as a human being, I just could not take it anymore." On how many levels could this be idiotic at the same time?

First of all, you've gotta love the rationalization that yes, he did falsify his resume and he "takes responsibility" for that, but he "never ever tried to misrepresent that to anyone". I mean, unless you count the resume. Apparently this is the reverse of the old maxim that an oral contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Sure, he wrote a resume that claimed he had graduated when he didn't, but he didn't try to misrepresent the reality that he hadn't graduated.

Second of all, the revelation that he had lied on his resume didn't come from those evil global warming scientists with an agenda, it came from Nick Anthis, a Texas A&M graduate now at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship studying biochemistry. And George, I've got news for you. If you lied on your resume - and you did - then pointing out that you lied on your resume is not a "smear" and your integrity and credibility should be questioned. You weren't smeared, you were caught in a lie.