The human capacity for self-destruction is unfailing. That people overtly lie about their curriculum vitae is nothing new. Usually stretching the facts about one's life and experience is tempted by the pressure to gain professional ground on the big board of life. And, usually if and when exposed, these people are in the mainstream of life and career; they fabricate for a specific return on a not-so-good investment. For example, high percentages of job seekers admit lying on applications. Some would view this as benign; a momentary lapse in judgment.
 
Conversely, far more difficult to dissect is the prominent career winner's sojourn off the trail to trade on an elaborate parallel life experience; a time remembered that never happened. A few days ago Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was in simple terms, "found out." As often happens as the old bromide goes, the higher they rank, the harder they fall. There may be nothing more ignoble than one's picture on the front page of the New York Times with an article proclaiming the high crime of impersonating a war hero. Such was the case for Blumenthal, until now regarded a lay-down for Christopher Dodd's senate seat. That was then...
 
Mr. Blumenthal would do well to look just across the Massachusetts state line toward the venerable old Seven Sisters' campus at Mount Holyoke College for the curious story of Joe Ellis, one of the school's most celebrated faculty and holder of an endowed chair. While my daughter attended there, Ellis taught a course on the Vietnam War. Students fought to gain entry. Ellis who taught at West Point prior to coming to South Hadley lectured on the perils of soldiering in Vietnam; vivid accounts of daily suffering and carnage as he endured warfare with the troops of the US Army, Marines and ARVN. His lectures were spellbinding, compelling beyond words. They were also a complete lie. Joe Ellis never set foot in Vietnam.
 
As inevitably happens, as Ellis' articles proliferated and the names, battles, and geographic references were consumed and circulated by readers. People who had been in Vietnam began to test their memories and contact buddies. "Hey, I don't remember Joe Ellis...was he with us in the 101st ?" Ellis' cinematic accounts of being a paratrooper with the elite 101st Airborne were riveting to be sure. They just simply never happened. Ultimately the college was besieged with inquiries asking about Ellis's history and credentials. In the end, the vaunted professor came clean with Mount Holyoke's administration, faculty, student body and alumni. From the Boston Globe to Time Magazine, Joe Ellis, PhD, Vietnam hero, and holder of an endowed chair at one of America's shining members of the east coast academic elite, had simply made it all up.
 
Unlike Richard Blumenthal who dishonored anyone who's ever served in the military by parsing his words in search of a semantic back alley retreat, Joe Ellis took the sulfur, forfeiting a year at MHC without pay, concurrently surrendering his endowed chair.  Ultimately Ellis' position was restored, and rightfully so we'd argue, based on his gifts as a writer, scholar and teacher.
 
Blumenthal will best be judged by voters, though history will not likely be kind. Various media clips of Blumenthal reflecting, "When I was in Vietnam..." or, "When I wore the uniform in Vietnam," are embedded in the mind and for all time. His fantastic misrepresentation should be a lesson for anyone contemplating embellishing the past. It is one thing to claim you played varsity tennis, won a debate championship, or sailed single handed across the Gulf of Mexico. It's quite another to claim membership in the most hallowed of halls, the pantheon of war veterans who risked and sacrificed their lives.
 
The lingering question is simply the one that asks, "Why would someone risk so much for so little?"  Perhaps, in time, Richard Blumenthal can enlighten us.