Misremembering Our Lives

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal looked like a shoo-in to take Chris Dodd’s place in the United States Senate until Ray Hernandez of the New York Times reported this week that the Attorney General had frequently “misrepresented” his military service in campaign speeches. Blumenthal served in the Marine Reserve – after receiving multiple military deferments – and never saw duty in Vietnam. But on a number of occasions, especially when addressing veterans groups, the Attorney General had presented himself as a Vietnam vet.

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal told a gathering of veterans and senior citizens in Norwalk in March of 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

It’s not clear that Blumenthal’s fibs about his service record will be fatal to his candidacy – he’s a widely respected Democrat in this Blue state and has an impressive record as Attorney General. But it’s still surprising that a man of Blumenthal’s stature and integrity would lie about his past in order to win some votes.

Or is that what happened?

As Michael Barbaro and David Halbfinger reported in a follow-up story in the Times, Blumenthal’s misrepresentations of his military service grew over time. Former Connecticut Congressman Chris Shays noticed the change during years of listening to Blumenthal’s speeches. “He just kept adding to the story, the more he told it,” Shays told the Times.

Brian McAllister Linn, a professor from Texas A&M who specializes in military history, told the reporters, “There is a lot of anecdotal evidence of this phenomenon of exaggerating military service by people who feel nostalgic because they missed their war.”

But I think it’s more than that. I think it’s about the way our memories remodel our life histories.

I thought about this recently when I was researching a column about my experiences during the Gulf War (see “Field Notes of a Hotel Warrior, Part III” on February 26). I remembered a great story about General Schwarzkopf that I wanted to tell to illustrate his exceptional skills as a communications strategist. It involved a question I’d asked at a press conference and his clever answer. I’d told the story a hundred times, but I looked up clips of the news conference to confirm the quote. It turned out that I had the quote right, but I had “misremembered” the question that had provoked the General’s reply. It didn’t alter the point of the story at all, but I was stunned by the fact that I had so clearly remembered something that wasn’t in fact, a fact. And I think this happens to all of us a lot more often than we realize.

Terry Gross, the brilliant host of National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, interviewed the British comedian Russell Brand about a year ago and they talked about how Brand had landed his breakout role as Aldous Snow in the 2008 movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Gross played a clip from a previous interview she’d done with the movie’s writer, Jason Segel, who described how Brand had arrived for his audition completely unprepared.

As Segel described it, Brand walked onstage and said, “You’ll have to forgive me, mate, I’ve only had a chance to take a cursory look at your script. Perhaps you could tell me what you require?”

Brand said that the first time he heard Segel tell that story, he told him, “I would never have said that! That’s really, really rude and I would never say that. I’m an Englishman. I’m a gentleman. It’s unforgivable, and I would never, ever say that.”

But, as Brand told Terry Gross, “Of course, it was all on film – it’s an audition – and I DID say that! I can’t believe it!”

“Makes you wonder about the rest of your life,” Gross commented, “what you think you’re doing... what you’re really doing…”

I liked Brand’s reply. “I’m an unreliable witness of my own existence,” he said, “so perhaps my autobiography should be dramatically re-edited by people who were actually there.”

Dick Blumenthal probably feels the same. We live in the Google/Facebook/You Tube age, and so many of our “misrememberings,” like Brand’s audition, end up on the electronic record, for all to read and see and hear.

I’m not trying to give Blumenthal a pass, just like I wasn’t willing to give Hillary Clinton a pass when she misremembered coming under sniper fire at that Bosnian airport in 1996, or the many professional athletes who have misremembered their use of steroids, or Richard Nixon’s many misrememberings of his role in the Watergate cover-up. Sometimes it is just a matter of telling a lie to win some votes or avoid responsibility for past transgressions. But to some degree, I think we’re all victims of our imperfect memories. We’re all unreliable witnesses to our own lives. And, like Russell Brand, we sometimes need to have our facts checked by people who were actually there.