The Truth Is, Everybody Lies but Few Get Consequences

So, UCLA basketball coach Jim Harrick got fired for lying to his boss, huh?

Gulp.

Lying to a chancellor does sound more serious than lying to a regular boss, but Chancellor Charles Young’s firing of Harrick could set an ugly precedent.

Like, what if other bosses develop that approach?

Young all but said that Harrick’s apparent NCAA recruiting violation wasn’t the reason he got canned. What sunk the coach, the chancellor said, was that Harrick originally lied about the misdeed. Young then repeated what in recent years has become one of the silliest mantras ever uttered--namely, that covering up a crime is sometimes worse than the crime itself.

I don’t know if it has its roots in Watergate (Young invoked that episode), but that notion always bugs me.

Here’s why: When people screw up, the natural human instinct is to cover it up. If the original crime weren’t significant, there would be little need to cover it up. Why should following a natural protective instinct be a fireable offense, but not the act that prompted it? Put another way, if the original act isn’t worth getting fired over, why is lying about it?

Now, for you young people out there, I’m not condoning lying to protect yourself. It would be nice if we all said, “Oops, you caught me, I’m sorry,” but that’s not what people do most of the time. Most of the time, we know that what we did was not nice and, either because of shame or fear, we lie.

Why, then, is lying given such exalted status in the pantheon of no-nos?

Is it the influence of one of the earliest stories we heard as children--where little George Washington chopped down the cherry tree and, when confronted by his father, confessed, saying, “I cannot tell a lie”?

But isn’t anyone over the age of, oh, 7 or 8, given a waiver on that one?

Don’t adults come to learn that, every now and then, people lie about things? It’s not a good trait and it reveals a personal weakness, but don’t we go a little too far when we make the lie more serious than the offense?

I probably sound like a candidate for “America’s Most Wanted,” but how many American workers could survive a boss with Young’s sensibilities?

I don’t lie to my boss (unless the truth would hurt him), but it’s not because of any moral superiority. It’s because I’m a lousy liar. When I start to spin one, the color begins rising in my neck, and I invariably begin looking at my shoes. Other people are more adroit at the art of lying, and, judging from some people I know, practice makes perfect.

But to get fired for it?

Consider the possibilities. Every phony expense report is a lie. Every day you call in sick when you’re not is a lie. People lie at work every day.

If corporate America fired people for those reasons . . . well, talk about downsizing!

And while we’re on the subject, how about bosses who lie to their employees? Is it always the truth when they say, “We’d like to give you a raise, but we can’t.”

Obviously, not all lies are created equal. There are degrees of felonies, to be sure.

In the Harrick matter, I don’t want to come out on the side of lying. I only want to come out on the side of appropriate punishment.

Maybe in the Young-Harrick affair, it’s a case where you had to be there. Maybe there’s something else going on that elevated Harrick’s lie to an unacceptable level. Maybe there’s a history there that other people don’t know about.

If not, though, and if Harrick’s reputation is as solid as has been reported over the years, I’m baffled by his banishment. Wouldn’t a five- or 10-game suspension have delivered just as stern a message and addressed the issue of lying?

Was the lie really more serious than the crime?

I guess this has been a roundabout way of asking the one question that lingers in my mind: If the chancellor was willing to forgive Harrick for one recruiting violation, why couldn’t he forgive him for one lie?

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.