Deception

Is it OK to tell kids that their dead dog is up in heaven, prancing around in its puppy body? That their belly-up goldfish are just sleeping? That the medicine they have to take is making bad germs fly right out their ears?Deception is a well-practiced, time- tested device for rearing children. Yet it's also suspect and often frowned upon, even though many of the tales seem harmless enough.A magnificent deception -- from father to son -- is at the root of one of the season's most acclaimed movies, "Life Is Beautiful," which was honored as Best Foreign Film at this year's Academy Awards.

WASHINGTON -- In the early days of World War II, a wily and ambitious Texas congressman concocted a sure-fire way to go far in politics: Create a heroic record of combat.So Lyndon B. Johnson, a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve, got himself assigned to be a presidential observer in the South Pacific. Johnson was a passenger on a B-26 which briefly came under fire from a Japanese Zero fighter before landing safely at its base. He had been in action for 13 minutes before he headed home on the next plane.

WASHINGTON -- Last week, after California voters rejected an initiative that would have required unions to get permission annually from their members to take money from their paychecks to spend on political activity, AFL-CIO President John. J. Sweeney claimed that the clear message was that "pounding working families is a losing proposition." Maybe so, but the proponents say they will keep trying.The initiative, called "paycheck protection" by its advocates but derided as "paycheck deception" by organized labor, had led in early polls by as much as 72 percent to 21. But a television advertising and direct-mail blitz by labor costing $17 million or more eventually turned voter sentiment around, and the initiative was rejected by 54 percent to 46 percent.

LITTLE BY LITTLE the facts get bigger and bigger about the Democratic National Committee's open pockets for illicit and unethical campaign contributions. Little by little, President Clinton and his White House handlers fess up that their meetings with big donors with big Asian connections were more than just drop-by social chats.As the evidence mounts, the president assumes the pose of injured innocence he has used to explain his tangled affairs in what is known as Whitewater. He has even compared his plight with that of Richard Jewell, who was targeted and then exonerated in the Atlanta Olympics bombing.

Is there any more delicate a contraption than a comedy? It makes the first flying machines look like Concordes. For example, here's "While You Were Sleeping," just barely airborne, wavering between oblivion and absurdity, almost stalling out a dozen times, then finally, somehow, awkwardly, desperately, triumphing at the end.The film is based on a premise that generates 90 minutes of amusing wrinkles, and that's where it gets into trouble: It's 120 minutes...

Once upon a time, we had presidents who were heroes. Franklin Roosevelt may have been the last of those. He died 50 years ago today, back when myth-making was still a part of the political process.For those of you who missed it, FDR was elected president four times. He cajoled us out of a great depression. He guided us through a great and terrible war. As much as any one man, he made possible what would be called the American century. You can make myth from that.There was little he couldn't do.Except walk.

"Deception," which opens today at Westview Cinemas, is such a drab title that surely we here in this department can do better. Why not call it "Dead Men Don't Write Checks," for it's about a seemingly dead man who writes some checks.Or what about "Andie's World Cruise Vacation," for that's what it's really about: former model and current quasi-actress Andie McDowell going to exotic places, posing fetchingly against a backdrop of Third World poverty and despair. It's sort of like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue without the swimsuits.

WASHINGTON -- Officials in the "star wars" project rigged a crucial test and faked other data in a program of deception that misled Congress as well as the intended target, the Soviet Union, four former Reagan administration officials said.The deception program was designed to feed the Kremlin half-truths and lies about the project, formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, the former administration officials said.It helped persuade the Soviets to spend tens of billions of dollars to counter the U.S. effort to develop a space-based shield against nuclear attack proposed by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, they said.

The best suggestion yet is Bawlamer Merlins.General Powell is getting $6 million for his memoirs and does not have to bother to write them. He will hire some hack to do that.The Star Wars project was a brilliant Cold War deception that fooled the Kremlin into bankrupting the Soviet Union and Congress into doing the same.Hizzoner is going to bring mayors from 75 countries to Baltimore to consider his ideas on drugs and if that does not make him governor, nothing will.

LOS ANGELES -- While making movies about the controversial subject of interracial romance is all the rage these days, marketing them is another matter.However sensitively or honestly a particular film may handle the issue, trying to sell it with a minute-long TV ad or single-image poster involves serious reductionism.Marketers run the dual risks of alienating customers who are uncomfortable with the concept and offending more open-minded viewers by trivializing the matter.While theatrical trailers and television commercials can't hide the colors of actors' skins, posters, newspaper ads and billboards enjoy a much wider range of graphic gambits.

That underrated actor Ewan McGregor recently did something even Liam Neeson couldn't do: Triumph in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. But when it comes to slick New York City genre movies, he's a jinx. He helped sink the witless Manhattan sex farce Down With Love (2003), and he couldn't inject life into the psychiatric trick mystery Stay. He does even worse in the new Gothic-Gotham suspense film Deception. This awful, glossy hybrid of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Eyes Wide Shut serves up McGregor as a shy high-powered accountant, crudely banged and boringly bespectacled despite his expensive tailoring.

Being deceptive can be costly - particularly if you're a wasp. Researchers at the University of Arizona caught female paper wasps, matched them by size and videotaped them as they fought inside plastic dishes - staring each other down, grappling, running at one another and trying to bite and climb on one another. They noticed that wasps with tiny black spots on their faces tended to be more dominating. But when they painted tiny black spots on some of the less dominant wasps, the impostors were beaten up more often than before.

Here's a look at new titles that offer gamers everything from fights to play-along tunes to a shot at world domination. Mortal Kombat: Deception Bloody bouts and ultraviolent finishing moves make Midway's fighting game the target of rancor among parents and politicians. But compared with the gritty realism in many violent games, Mortal Kombat: Deception, the sixth in the series, is almost cartoonish. Impaled warriors and exploding body parts make this game a big no-no for youngsters, but it has turned into more than just a gore fest.

"IT WAS AN EMOTIONAL moment to walk in that room; the energy level was beyond belief. I've been in front of some excited crowds before, but this ... the place truly erupted and I could see the, first, look of amazement, and then look of appreciation on the kids' faces." By his own account, that moment of connection put to rest any last doubts of the commander in chief that his lightning-fast trip halfway around the world to visit U.S. troops in Baghdad on Thanksgiving was the right thing to do. What a morale booster!

DID PRESIDENT Bush lie to the American people in his State of the Union address when he said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"? Technically, no. Why? Because "the statement that he made was indeed accurate," said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 13. "The British government did say that." Ms. Rice speaks the literal truth, just as her boss does, to distort what is meaningful. Outright lying is not the administration's modus operandi; willful deception is. Like the bank robber who leaves a distinctive mark at the scene of the crime, Mr. Bush's statement on Iraq shows his telltale MO. Moreover, duping the nation into war is only one case of the pattern of calculated deception that has gone on since the outset of his administration.

IRAQ'S WEAPONS of mass destruction? Forget about 'em, says President Bush. Don't dwell on the past. Those killjoys who keep bringing them up are indulging in "revisionist history." He actually said that. Mr. Bush's argument is this: Reminding me in June of what I said in March is out of bounds. The president's unrevised history has him warning that Saddam Hussein was a threat, and that the Iraqi dictator had to be gotten rid of. That was the key point. Whether the threat was weapons, or terrorism, or the evil eye, what does it matter?

Putting millions in prison adds to public safety "Why in the land of the free should 2 million ... be locked up" ("Locked up in land of the free," June 1)? Because each of those 2 million people incarcerated chose to violate the laws created to protect the freedom of the other 99.3 percent of individuals, the ones who choose to observe those laws. Indeed, the statistics in The Sun's article suggest a direct relationship between the increasing prison population and the decline in violent crime and property crime.

LIES, FIBBING, deception. That's what The Sun has discovered in probing the performance of the city's much-touted 311 telephone system. More than half of the test complaints about garbage, graffiti and malfunctioning street lights went unresolved. Worse yet, in numerous instances, workers claimed to have fixed the reported problems when, in truth, nothing was done. Mayor Martin O'Malley needs to crack the whip and weed out these lying ne'er-do-wells who are sabotaging the 311 telephone system.

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is feeling heat again over its efforts to manage the news in time of war, only this time with a twist. A new brainchild called, believe it or not, the Office of Strategic Influence has a mission to dispense information through the foreign press that is designed to support the American war objectives. So far, so good. The wrinkle is that the new office may be doing its strategic influencing in ways that might not pass the smell test. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, at a news conference in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, gave an example of "a strategic or tactical deception": passing word that an attack on an al-Qaida stronghold would be coming from the north when it really would be coming from the east.

Is it OK to tell kids that their dead dog is up in heaven, prancing around in its puppy body? That their belly-up goldfish are just sleeping? That the medicine they have to take is making bad germs fly right out their ears?Deception is a well-practiced, time- tested device for rearing children. Yet it's also suspect and often frowned upon, even though many of the tales seem harmless enough.A magnificent deception -- from father to son -- is at the root of one of the season's most acclaimed movies, "Life Is Beautiful," which was honored as Best Foreign Film at this year's Academy Awards.