JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

A few weeks ago, I wrote two columns about the dishonor that Kansas City Manager Brian Platt has brought to City Hall with his assertion to Chris Hernandez, former communications director, that lying was an acceptable media strategy.

As I pointed out back then, the Platt story does not seem to have ignited significant public outrage, and I proposed that many people have become conditioned to government officials lying, partly because former President Trump set a new, upside-down standard for integrity.

And yet, here we are now faced with a classic example of what kind of public official (besides Trump) citizens can end up with when lying becomes routine.

I’m speaking, of course, of George Santos, the Republican from Long Island who was elected last month to the U.S. House of Representatives, while lying about everything from his finances to his education and work experience.

This guy is so bad he fabricated a story that he “lost four employees” in the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando in 2016. He now says the unnamed people he was talking about didn’t actually work for him at the time but that he was in the process of hiring them for some company he was starting in Orlando.

In a story today, The Washington Post said Santos’ apparently baseless claim “will surely be worth delving into given that it might involve exploiting a tragedy for personal gain.”

While the Platt story didn’t seem to strike a chord, the Santos story has sparked outrage among many voters because, in his case, he was not talking about lying in the generic sense but lying about very specific things, such as where he attended college and where he had worked. (He claimed during the campaign that he graduated from Baruch College in 2010 with a bachelor’s in economics and finances, and he claimed he had worked for Goldman Sachs but quit after finding that it “was not as fulfilling as he had anticipated.”)

In Santos’ case, thousands of people who voted for him are calling for him not to be seated in Congress, or, if he is seated, to be expelled by his colleagues because he is an outright fraud.

His case has caused such an uproar that federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether he could be charged with crimes.

One official who is investigating, a Republican district attorney named Anne T. Donnelly, said in a statement: “The numerous fabrications and inconsistencies…are nothing short of stunning.”

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That brings us back to Brian Platt.

On the Dec. 16 edition of KCPT’s “Week in Review,” host Nick Haines asked his panelists if they thought Platt would be fired.

Two of the panelists took up the issue, with Pete Mundo, a conservative radio talk-show host, going first. Mundo scoffed at the idea of Platt getting fired, saying…

“The debate is whether they lied about whether or not nearly 300 miles of street lanes were being paved, or over 300 miles. If I had a dime for every time a politician thought about or said they were going to lie to the media, I’d be sitting on an island somewhere. This is not a story.”

Eric Wesson, managing editor and publisher of The Kansas City Call, took sharp issue with Mundo.

“Somewhere in this is public trust,” Wesson said. “I have to believe what the city manager says — whether it’s potholes or whether it’s whatever. I have to believe that.”

I side, of course, with Wesson. To me, it’s a short span from George Santos’ specific, outrageous lies to Platt’s general assertion that lying to the media — and by extension the public — is acceptable.

This leaves us with two questions about Platt…

First, can Kansas Citians trust anything Brian Platt says from here on out?

And, second, what are the chances of him “finding” integrity all of a sudden because he’s been exposed as one who condones lying?

You tell me.