It’s been twenty years since Arnold Schwarzenegger kept the fact that he was a spy from his movie wife Jaime Lee Curtis in True Lies. She really wasn’t lied to as much as just not told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Not unlike a lot of stuff that’s going on now.

Even though it’s Spring and we are still getting legitimate bad weather, we do find ourselves with clear skies and no snow every couple of days a week. The weather forecasters, now used to a season’s worth of viewers hanging on to their every isobar must crave the days when something on their radar screens actually shows potential “Severe Weather.”   No problem. If the local forecast has no precipitation nearby, they just bring up some neighboring radar. And, voila, there we have the greens, and the blues, and the whites, and the greys we are used to seeing and they can say with all honesty, “This storm could dump another couple of inches before it’s all over.” Just because it’s 200 miles away doesn’t make it untrue.

Recently a sales brochure showed up in the mail. We think it was a sales brochure. It had glossy pages, colorful pictures, and big fonts declaring “$10 off!” But it never said $10 off what. Of a regular low, low price? Off an already discounted price? Off the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (AKA modern fiction)? There was no indication of what the starting or final price was or is. Ten dollars off, true. Cost to you, who knows.

Fine print is annoying in print ads usually requiring a good strong magnifying glass. Fine print on a television ad is basically useless. It’s at the bottom of the screen, still requiring a magnifying glass even with a 50 inch picture. And just as you are ready to focus in, it disappears. But now we have to deal with fine print on radio ads! If after the ad you hear a breathless individual who manages to speak at an annoying 720 words a minutes all in a near whisper, assume that everything you just heard clearly in the body of the ad has now been modified, restricted, or limited. The ad was absolutely true. You can indeed get cell phone service for 87 cents a month. However, the additional access, roaming, internet, texting, calling, receiving, and bill paying fees add up to $220 for the life of the contract unless the phone company decides to raise any or all of them.

These are just a few examples of today’s true lies. You can come up with many more if you think about it for thirty seconds or so. True? Absolutely. Misleading? Even more so. And it doesn’t take a spy to figure out what’s wrong with those pictures.

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?