For something like fifty years, popular culture has enforced a uniform social code: "if you lie, you will be found out and humiliated." This has been a staple of sitcom humor since I Love Lucy. (If there was an episode of ILL that didn't involve Lucy fibbing, embroidering, and ultimately, purportedly hilariously, being given a comeuppance, I can't remember it.)

Well, sometime in the last decade that all changed. Nowadays the social code is reality TV: "lie and be slimy to get ahead, if you get caught, bluff." Witness The Apprentice, The Office, Survivor, O'Reilly, etc. ad nauseum.

The concurrent recrudescence of certain right-wing politics can't be just a coincidence, can it?