Donzerly Light: Right & Wrong

My husband and I were at the farmers market once and we got stopped by a couple of young men that had a religious agenda that they wanted to force on us. I would have just kept walking, but my husband is kinder and more patient (aka gullible) and let them do their spiel. There were two of them, but only one was talking. The other one looked like he’d rather be doing anything – giving a cat a bath, math homework, listening to a presentation on consent – other than watching his associate give his deeply problematic take on how Jesus should be running our lives.

For a while, I thought it would be easier to just let this guy finish than to tell him he’s missed the mark (something I learned from dating in my 20s). But when he told us that having the thought, “I’m so angry with that person, I could kill them,” is just as much of a sin in Jesus’s eyes as actually killing someone, I had to put myself in timeout. And by “timeout,” I mean I walked a few feet away and sat on a bench, looking as bored and annoyed as possible, because I would not be helping anyone by letting this person go on thinking the nonsense coming out of their mouth was anything other than the gibberish of someone who doesn’t realize they’re in a cult.

The whole  episode took probably 20 minutes, but it felt like it took a month. No one’s minds were changed and that guy probably spent the rest of the day having hallucinations about someday becoming the fourth wise man. But it also made me think about the idea of having a very strict idea of right and wrong.

Some people apply that same strict idea of right and wrong to telling the truth. I would argue that you should tell the truth whenever possible, but I also believe that telling a lie is sometimes bad. The level of bad, though, can vary a lot.

A few days ago, I ordered some tacos at a food truck. When they asked me my name so they knew what to shout when the tacos were ready, I told them my name, “Heath.” The person responded with, “Keith?” and I said, “sure.” Was that a lie? It was. Was it also easier than having to repeat my name three more times while getting louder each time? Yes. Is that lie just as bad as telling a police officer that you didn’t burn down an orphanage that you did, in fact, set ablaze? It is not.

But what about famous people? They tell lies all the time in order to maintain their image and they are often very, very stupid lies. The kind of lies that, once exposed, make me wonder how in the world they thought they were going to get away with it. Take Milli Vanilli for example. Did they really think that no one was ever going to find out that they weren’t really singing? There are so many people involved with putting on a concert or even performing just one song in front of thousands of people. And they thought that the people who had to make sure the mics were dead or hit “play” on the vocal track were never going to have too much beer some night and tell their friends?

Obviously, we all know how that worked out, but what about some of the other, possibly even dumber lies that celebrities have told? This is by no means an exhaustive list. I’m sure some famous person has told a couple of stupid and obvious lies since you started reading this. I’ve got some top choices for celebrity lies below and if you don’t think they’re as dumb as I do, then my name isn’t Keith.

• Jennifer Lopez cancels her 2024 summer tour. Remember in early 2024 when Jennifer Lopez put out an album and then made a movie-length music video that included each song on the album and she paid for it all with her own money and then the public collectively said, “no thank you,” and slowly backed away? That was brutal, but then she also scheduled a big summer tour. When she cancelled the tour, she said it was so she could, “take time off to be with her children, family and close friends.” That’s not why she cancelled the tour! She cancelled it because tickets weren’t selling. If you’re trying to sell tickets to the public and the public isn’t buying the tickets, I think it’s safe to assume that the public knows that tickets aren’t being sold. She should have just told the truth: tickets aren’t selling and she needed time to make a plan to get out of that Ben Affleck marriage.

  
  

• Robert Pattinson said he saw a clown die. I forget how many Twilight movies there were. 5? 13? 27? It probably doesn’t matter, I just know there were a lot. I also know that every time a new Twilight movie came out, Robert Pattinson and the rest of the stars of the movie would have to go out and do press to promote the film. In 2011, Robert Pattinson was on The Today Show, being interviewed by a pre-sex scandal Matt Lauer, and he told Lauer that, when he was a child, he saw a clown die in a car explosion. Turns out that Robert was so tired of answering the same questions, he just decided that he’d throw in an outlandish lie every once in a while to keep things interesting. A clown’s demise and a full acknowledgement of a lie that made perfect sense? No notes.

  
  

• Hilaria Baldwin pretended to be Spanish. Alec Baldwin’s much younger wife, and Massachusetts native, decided that 2021 was the perfect time to lead people to believe that she was Spanish. What a weird way to step back into the world after a pandemic. She would use a Spanish accent from time to time and once, she even said that she forgot the English word for “cucumber” in a cooking video that was posted online. I get the sense that being married to Alec Baldwin would be challenging, but not challenging enough that it would make you want to tell everyone you’re from Spain when you aren’t. When asked, Hilaria would chalk this all up to “cultural fluidity,” which is the same excuse I use when I order chicken fingers at a Peruvian restaurant.

  
  

• When And Just Like That said that they meant the last episode of season three to be the conclusion of the reboot. I know you’re reading this on the internet and I’m certainly not dumb enough to think that I can convince anyone on the internet that And Just Like That wasn’t that bad. You and I both know that the internet hated that show and you and I both know that’s why the creators decided to stop making it. They didn’t stop it because they thought an episode that included a clogged toilet would be the perfect way to say goodbye to Carrie Bradshaw. They stopped because they probably got tired of everyone bitching about it all the time, which is a perfectly good reason to stop making something.

  
  

• Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman and the college admissions scandal. Do you think that Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman’s kids even gave a shit where they went to college? Those kids were never going to have to work real jobs once they were done with school. If they just needed something to do to kill time for four years, they could have gone to any school they wanted to. Why go to all the trouble to get your kid into USC when they probably would have been perfectly happy going anyplace where they could get a single dorm room? Did Lori and Felicity do it because they thought the public cared about where their kids went to school? I didn’t know either of them had children before this whole thing came out. I was more disappointed about that than I was about them lying to get their kids into college.

Takeaway Quote of the Week

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

– Winston Churchill, who apparently thinks the truth is just Donald Duck-ing it whenever possible.

Heath Smith is co-host of Fuzzy Memories, the podcast that celebrates the good, the rad and the fugly of the 80s and 90s. He was once asked by a cast member of MTV’s Road Rules if he was from Puerto Rico. In his free time, he enjoys Mariah Carey a normal and healthy amount. For a good time, follow him on Instagram.

Why "Donzerly Light"? Heath says: In elementary school, I thought "donzerly light" was part of the lyrics of the national anthem. I didn't realize that the actual words were "dawn's early light." I just assumed "donzerly" was an old-timey word that meant "majestic" or something like that. My middle school social studies teacher, who thought I was trying to make a joke with “donzerly,” would be 100% irritated by naming my column this way, and that makes it even better.