American Notes: California

A gruff, gray-haired businessman who cried because he had to lay off workers at his small shop. A farmworker idled by an Arctic freeze. A carpenter who could find no work framing houses. In his State of the State speech in early January, California Governor Pete Wilson recalled meeting each of these recession victims and told his listeners, "Tough times demand compassion, realism and honesty." How about truth? When reporters from the San Jose Mercury News went out in search of these unfortunates, they discovered they were fictional characters invented by the Governor. His staff defended the fanciful encounters as "an allegorical statement" and as a "composite" of real people Wilson had met. No dice, said Marvin Kalb of Harvard's Barone Center on the Press: "This demonstrates the need that politicians feel to mislead the public."