Ted Botha

"Even the New York Times was victimized a few months ago when it was discovered that one of its reporters, Jayson Blair, had plagiarized quotes and fabricated material in more than 35 of his articles. But before Jayson Blair, there was Stephen Glass. Glass, a 25-year-old rising star at The New Republic, wrote dozens of high-profile articles for a number of national publications in which he made things up."

-- cbsnews.com, August 2003

This article is true. No, really. I state that a priori, upfront and first of all, so that you know what and who you are dealing with, a truthful article and someone who writes the truth. There has been some confusion of late that this is not the case and that what you read might not be the truth. So, now if I don’t attest and vow that everything I write is true – and believe me, it is – you might think otherwise. People are so suspicious. They read something and they think that it’s so fabulous, so amazing and so never-been-heard-before that it couldn’t be true. They don’t realize that these facts (every single darned last one of them, even the spelling of the names and the quotes, which I have on taped phone messages which I keep in my bottom drawer) really are facts. Facts, facts, facts, that is all that I’m interested in. I would never think of veering off the path of righteous truthfulness and objectivity. I swear that none of the things I have written about or will ever write about have never happened. I can vouch that you will read absolutely nothing in this article about sex that was never consummated between movie stars, and I will never write a single line about a weird religious group that isn’t really weird, isn’t actually a religious group or, indeed, doesn’t exist at all. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction, so why would I go ahead and make up stuff like that? As I said, my motto is the truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. Because if it wasn’t, and I lied, I would be found out sooner or later – and believe me, there are enough people looking over your shoulder all the time, waiting for you to tell an untruth – and then I wouldn’t be able to write anywhere anymore. Or at least anywhere that has some regard for the truth. Think of that. Maybe, if I was really lucky, after a long time (at least two years) out in the cold, someone would take pity on me and give me a book contract to write about all the lies I’d told, and how I had gone to great lengths to fabricate a lot of what I’d written, spending even more time on making up stuff than it would have taken to investigate the real thing, something I have never done, mind you. And then, after the book came out, someone would make a movie about me, which would put my life all across the silver screen, making me like some kind of a star when all I wanted to do was have a byline somewhere that told the truth. And then people would want me to come and address meetings of how I had reformed after having lied so much, and I would probably make a lot of money off the movie and books I sold. Then the very magazines and newspapers I’d lied to would want to hire me back again because I was famous now and I swore I wouldn’t lie anymore. Which, believe me, is something I won’t ever do. I promise. And that’s the truth.

Submitted to The New Yorker, but rejected with the standard rejection letter. “We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider it. THE EDITORS [their capitals, not mine]”