The nation is soaked to the skin in fakery. It's standing waist-deep
in a cistern of deceit under a drenching downpour of rigged ledgers,
plagiarized best sellers, stolen gold medals, spoiled ballots,
creepy-crawly priests, fictitious movie critics, padded resumes,
insider stock trades by zillionaire faux homemakers, term papers
downloaded of the Internet, journalists with nonexistent sources,
fiber-optic lines that run from nowhere to nowhere, engineered energy
shortages, intelligence agencies that don't return their operatives
urgent calls, investment gurus who don't buy what they sell,
ex-Presidents posing as motivational speakers, and rubbery lumps of 
composite aquatic protein that far too many markets label "crab."


   -- Walter Kirn, _Atlantic Monthly_ Aug,2002