Fly in the ointment

Within our moral fiber

Lies an oral fib

There you have it: My distaste for present-day politics in a haiku. Lately I’ve been thinking about lying. Can’t help it, considering this is an election year.

The Food and Drug Administration is now dealing with a suit regarding false and misleading information in a case against Chobani, the Greek yogurt company, for listing “evaporated cane juice” as a major ingredient in its pomegranate-flavored yogurt. The FDA has the power to regulate product labeling and can ask for a change if it deems a rule violation has been committed.

But what about claims made by actual people? The Federal Trade Commission has the power to keep TV advertising in check, to force a false claim to be dropped. But when it comes to advertising and marketing of political candidates, the FTC goes out to lunch. Why? Apparently its bailiwick covers corporations rather than people. Doesn’t that sound like the Citizens United decision taken one step further into the murk?

So, lies dominate our airwaves and flash across the internet. Apparently our government thinks it’s more important that we have honesty in our yogurt than in our elected leaders.

We as mere citizens are forced to use an online service such as Politifact or Snopes to separate fact from fiction. Wasn’t this once the job of the news media?

Unfortunately, our media generally doesn’t challenge a candidate’s statements, doesn’t examine or investigate. Instead, our media just perpetuates the inaccuracy, the disinformation, the lie.

Just as it perpetuates the lies about the Vineyard.

If you believe the media, this is a little summer Island resort for the rich that turns dull and bleak in the winter. Now, some may say, “Naw, you just have us confused with Nantucket,” but most Vineyarders will tell you this is just the media’s gussied-up way for excusing themselves for traveling here.

I have been coming here most of my life and living here for the past 17 months, and I can safely say this depiction is fiction. Let’s take this misconception apart, concept by concept.

The Vineyard little? All I know is when we drive from our home in Vineyard Haven to our former home in Menemsha, by the time we get there we could have flown to Boston. The Vineyard is nearly 100 square miles and has about 15,000 full-time residents. In size, it’s bigger than several countries. Liechtenstein is 62 square miles and Monaco is not even one square mile, but both of those places have populations around 36,000. Imagine! As far as land masses go, the Vineyard is on a par with St. Croix, the Caymans and St. Kitts and Nevis, but their populations are each in excess of 50,000.

So if this Island is little, it can only be in terms of inhabitants, but then that would fly in the face of the “summer” label. In the dog days, it feels much more like Monaco must feel every day.

The Vineyard is not a resort. It’s a community in a getaway location that just so happens to be surrounded by water. It’s a resort in verb only. If you’re a seasonal resident or visitor, you come here to resort to a different life style. And if you’re a full-time resident, in the summer you resort to the back roads and a life within walking distance.

Every place on the planet that earns a large percentage of its revenue from tourism has its share of millionaires. The summer population here can swell to more than 100,000. Add to that fact that half of the homes are seasonably occupied. I would hazard a guess that no more than two per cent of the Island would qualify as representing the nation’s affluent one per cent.

Life can be a struggle for a lot of people living here. It takes a lot to live here, considering a cost of living that’s 60 per cent higher than the national average and housing prices that are about 95 per cent higher.

What makes it worthwhile is that the Vineyard is far more rich in its collective heart than in its bank accounts. To me the Island is beginning to feel like one big extended family. Generosity of spirit keeps the sense of community alive. Generosity of wealth keeps the social and cultural infrastructure intact and improving.

What the media tends to forget are the three other seasons and the people who live through them in the six towns — that’s towns, not resorts. Dull and bleak? That’s more the definition of winter weather than of this Island. I identify climate by the people within it. Vineyarders are anything but dull and bleak. The mix of beauty and character continues right through the chilly temperatures and leafless landscape. I’m happy to be living here. No lie.

Our media has been perpetuating myths, misconceptions and lies since our republic began and our founding fathers opened their mouths. Back before the FDA and the FTC, there was young George Washington and that former cherry tree — when he admitted to his proud father, “I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little hatchet.”

Never happened. Virtuous George was just a virtual George. Turns out the story was made up by Parson Weems, a contemporary biographer promoting Washington. An Episcopal minister, he faced financial hardship and instead became a popularizing author and literary agent — occupations more tolerant of hokum and bunkum. And here we are.

Arnie Reisman and his wife, Paula Lyons, regularly appear on the weekly NPR comedy quiz show, Says You! He also writes for the Huffington Post.