Pinocchio's Nose, Dorian's Portrait

The latest news of Former Orange County Assemblyman Michael Duvall caught talking about his extra-marital affairs on a hot mike and his subsequent denial of the affairs as reported by Shane Goldmacher and Patrick McGreevy in the LA Times. The affair would have been just another "he said she said" back and forth in the days before Google Search, where we would just have to rely on what is printed in front of us, shown on the local news or written on the lavatory walls.

Now we can filter the truth from the lies with the speed of a few keystrokes - "He Said" will be rebutted "She Said" within seconds and sometimes with accompanying scans of proof.

"There are two kind of lies, lies with short legs and lies with long noses. Yours...happen to have long noses." - The Turquoise Fairy / Pinocchio

Has the internet made us more honest? Or more careful of what we post online? We can't control what others post about us, complimentary or inflammatory. All we can do is flip on that switch that checks what comes out of our mouths or posts online first. Lies grow exponentially online, just like Pinoccchio's nose, copy and pasted into blogs, Facebook and Twitter, it leaves a trail that can never be covered up.

Please and Thank You

One of Emily Post's rules of etiquette for public behavior is "Set a good example. Rudeness begets rudeness." Your words and actions in the public and online forums show who you are, no matter how hard you try to hide one side of yourself, it will be revealed to the light of day like Dorian Gray's Portrait..

"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes." - The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

Dorian Gray never had to account for his misdeeds, so he never learned from them; we don't have a cursed portrait of ourselves hidden in the attic like he did, but we do have our words online to account for. We need to learn from our mistakes because they are blessings in disguise, without them we would be forever a puppet and never a fully realized human being.

Image: Ophelia Chong / Nightmen