Earnest money is a legal term. When you make a deal and you give the person you are dealing a dollar in “earnest money,” that is something that can be testified to in court.

The deals I have seen involved a hundred-dollar bill. If that hundred goes on the table, you had better be sure of what you are doing before you pick it up.

In my exchanges with joe ororke we keep talking about my use of words like “everybody” and “nobody” and “never.” His criticism was good and necessary, and I explained that a lot of times I use those words knowing they are not exactly true. The most obvious exception to “everybody knows” are the tens of thousands of people who are in a coma right now or who are on life support.

I know that. Yet I keep using “nobody” and “everybody.” I am stating an untruth when I know the exceptions. In other words, I am telling a lie, which is a statement that I know is untrue.

The problem is that if I were to be strictly accurate every time I made a statement I would have to list the exceptions. Your reaction would be that I am treating you like an idiot.

Being treated like an idiot is not just insulting, it is BORING. How long would you read this blog if I reeled off the list of exceptions to everything I said?

But joe has a point. I cannot use this reality to just declare everybody and nobody any time I want to.

Fortunately, this is not a new problem. The difference between a lie and poetic license goes back to the old Common Law distinction of earnest money.

Look at the article I just wrote. The average voter votes only for a politician who lies about his gut reaction to a beautiful blond and a black guy because the average voter is desperate to prove to himself that he is not a racist.

Unless the white politician is a true psychopath, the blond and black make his stomach turn. We know that. But the voter wants someone who will lie about it. So the politician is doing what voters want him to do.

The point is that that lie costs the voter nothing. There is no earnest money on it.

But if I am on Capitol Hill calling the list and a staffer lies to me about how his boss will vote. I report that lie to my boss. That costs me big time. You would be astonished how well your boss remembers exactly who is with him and who is against him on a particular piece of legislation that is critical to him.

So when you report a staffer’s lie about how his boss will vote, that is a lie with earnest money attached to it.

My boss paid a LOT to have senior staffer there to call the list, both in money and in power. If a staffer lied to me everybody on the Hill would know it FAST.

I called hundreds of list. I do not remember one single SENIOR staffer ever lying to me.

I would never tell you an untruth that would COST you something. I would never say something that is, strictly speaking, untrue if I did not expect you to understand the exceptions.

But you and joe have to keep reminding me of the line I am walking.