Truth Only Gets Paid Lip Service at Hearings : Television: Lies and innuendo, playing to the cameras and deception are not beneath senators, as days of Thomas-Hill testimony proves.

Alleged sexual harassment, lies and videotape. . . .

We give lip service to the morality of speaking truth. But the televised saga of Clarence Thomas and Anita Faye Hill both affirms and dramatizes how acceptable flat-out lying has become in society. Much of it through TV.

Lying is routine, so much a part of the furniture that Americans have become cynical about it or desensitized to it. Take your pick.

Not only does TV itself frequently fib to us--from deceptive self-promotion to misleadingly billing titillating stories as “coming up” and then holding them off--but so do the institutions of government.

Charges and countercharges from the recent Senate Judiciary Committee debate--creating some of the most memorable TV ever--continue to hang in the air. Our memories are selective, however.

We may never know whether Thomas or Hill was telling the truth. But Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the Republicans’ skilled anti-Hill interrogator, claims that on at least one occasion he knows.

Specter, a respected former prosecutor and student of the law, repeatedly and pointedly charged on TV that Hill had committed “perjury” in a specific portion of her testimony under oath regarding what she was initially told about the possible ramifications of her allegations.

When later challenged on that by at least one Democrat and some of the news media, Specter repeated the accusation of “perjury”--a red-button word if there ever was one--even more vociferously.

This is very serious business. Others have been prosecuted for speaking untruthfully to congressional committees. If Hill so clearly committed perjury, why isn’t there talk of criminal charges being brought against her for lying to Congress? Is it because Americans don’t care if she perjured herself? Is it because now, with Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation proceedings having concluded, Specter doesn’t care anymore? He seemed to when he meticulously explored Hill’s “intentional misstatement of fact”--this time without specifically mentioning perjury--in the Senate’s televised debate preceding Tuesday’s confirmation vote.

Specter himself had indicated earlier that Hill might have protected herself from perjury charges by later altering her testimony. If that’s the case, then why did he repeatedly evoked the “P” word in front of millions of TV viewers if not merely to discredit Hill and bolster Thomas?

Whatever your conclusion, the above is a vivid example of how masterfully Thomas supporters on the committee used the camera. While Hill supporters seemed content to make legal points--as if a jury would be examining the transcript--the Thomas side, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), shrewdly made TV points. Their arguments seemed designed primarily to persuade through TV by exploiting a medium that conveys tone and emotion better than anything else.

In any case, if Hill was lying, she should be prosecuted. And if Specter was being deceptive, then he should be held accountable.

Fat chance.

And here, talk about your high-tech lynchings, is some more serious business. As Saturday’s televised session was concluding, that sly politician of many wondrous accusations, Simpson himself, told America of negative reports pouring in to him about Hill, including “statements from her former law professors” and from Tulsa, Okla., saying, “Watch out for this woman!”

Watch out for this man!

It was Simpson who publicly questioned the motives and loyalties of CNN’s Peter Arnett for reporting from Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War. On Saturday, Simpson gave no details of these allegedly incriminating reports about Hill. And he did not reveal the names of her alleged accusers. But in a TV-tailored move designed to make the point that he had received them, and that they were voluminous, he fumbled with the inside of his jacket as if searching for documents.

Predictably, some of the TV coverage of Saturday’s session included only this striking soundbite, affirming that the colorful quote from the colorful person has the easiest access to the airwaves.

When confronted about all of this by Garrick Utley and Andrea Mitchell on NBC’s “Sunday Today,” Simpson defended his actions, still refusing to provide details or names but adding, in effect, that just about anything goes in politics. The “S” word--smear--comes to mind here.

In fact, those details and names never did surface, and only the stigma lingers. Even the former dean of the Oral Roberts University law school in Tulsa, where Hill taught, refused to attack her integrity while strongly refuting her charges against Thomas.

If the reports Simpson said he received did, indeed exist and were so serious, as he forcefully stated on national TV, why didn’t the pro-Thomas forces publicize them? They didn’t hold back on anything else.

But if there were no such charges, as one suspects, then Simpson himself was lying, and in any case, no senator on either side of the issue challenged him on it.

That’s because, in both major parties, anything does go in politics. TV’s coverage of the coming Presidential campaign will underline that. As further evidence, though, there was Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) during Tuesday’s debate on the Senate floor, hurdling his own checkered past to characterize the Senate’s treatment of Hill as “shameful” and to lament “the message we are sending to women across America.” You did a double take.

And retorted Specter: “We do not need characterizations like shame from the Senator from Massachusetts!”

Sadly, whatever deceptions air on TV, and in whatever venue, most of the public doesn’t seem to mind. As Specter mentioned Tuesday about this case: “We have a question of credibility.” But not only the credibility of Thomas and Hill.