These days folks don't like to talk about the truth much anymore. It's not that they don't think it's important. People allow that it's nice to have the truth around when they need it, but like a strong spice, they consider it should be used in small doses.

One reason for this is that the truth is often unpleasant to hear. Given how prone we all are to puttin' on airs and foolin' ourselves about it, the truth has a tendency to be downright embarrassin'.

That's because we like to pretend to be things we are not.

City folks come out to the country and laugh at the simple people, then find a ranch, buy a tractor and play like they are farmers. The country folk laugh at the city folk for all their crazy ways but most can't wait to buy fancy cars, big screen TV's and get on the Internet.

The truth is... the truth just ain't very popular. Politicians that tell the truth can't get elected. Business people that tell the truth can't sell their products. Honest show business folks lose their audience. Lawyers who tell the truth...well, never mind. There's not much chance of that.

Anyways, it's hard to locate truth in this world. You sure can't find it on television. Folks that sell things on TV are unconcerned with the truth.

There's a good reason for this. For instance, is Coca-Cola really the "real thing?' Maybe not, but how many sodas do you think 'sell if Coke-a-cola's advertisin' said "...buy our funny tasting brown sugar water that makes you burp" or if Maxwell House pitched a "bitter, addictive, black liquid that keeps you up all night?"

Cigarette commercials would all say "...buy cigarettes and die a lot sooner..." if the truth was popular in advertisin'. The car manufacturers would have to admit that their vehicles won't really make you more important.

We'd have to face the fact that havin' an expensive car or high-priced clothes will not necessarily fetch us more frequent or better sex.

All in all, the truth is not good for business. Alcohol companies would have to admit that gettin' drunk doesn't really make you more friends and drug companies would have to admit that we are all takin' way the heck too many pills and not gettin' any healthier.

This is somethin' we don't want to deal with. The old timey ways of makin' friends and stayin' healthy are a lot more trouble. It's no wonder the truth is so unpopular. Too much of it would wreck our economy and undermine our self-esteem!

That's why it's a good thing that the government spends so much time protectin' us from it. If we knew the truth about Grenada or Nicaragua or Iraq, or agent orange or campaign financin'...why we might not be able to think of ourselves as citizens of a country that is a beacon of liberty and justice. The whole country might start feelin' bad like we did during that nasty Vietnam thing. You remember how unpleasant that was. That was a time when there was way too much truth goin' around and it made a whole lot of people upset.

Just look what a bad job the truth did on ol' President Nixon an his buddies. We felt terrible about it, too. Why if the President was the best of us and the best of us was a crook...what does that say about the rest of us?

Thank goodness our modern day elected officials have the wisdom to protect themselves and us from any such foolishness.

In this day and time we are more sophisticated than we were back in the 1960's. Today, when our President slips up and we lose confidence in him, it's not because he did something crooked or immoral. We expect philandering and corruption of our political leaders. We just worry that a man who gets caught that easily lacks the political skills to do a good job of being the President.

It's like the truth about taxes. Back in the middle ages, the feudal lords expected 40% or more of their serfs' harvest or they locked them in the dungeon and took away their land. Today, we think of those serfs as slaves. Meanwhile, lots of us are payin' a good deal more than 40% of our income in taxes. Nobody wants to know the truth about that and neither do I. I'm embarrassed that I brought it up. Let's change the subject.

Sometimes the truth is very dangerous. It can get a body into all kinds of trouble. In fact, the truth has gotten people into trouble since the world began. Ol' Prometheus tried to give man the truth about fire and got his liver pecked out for his trouble. Socrates got the hemlock. Jesus got the cross. Joan of Arc got the stake. Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy... they all had one thing in common. They made the mistake of bein' a mite too liberal with the truth.

Happily, I've studied their examples. It's one of the advantages of having lived over 190 years. You learn a few lessons that are hard to get though your head in the first hundred years.

When I was young, I thought I had a duty to tell the truth. Even crazier, I thought I knew what the "truth" was. The older I got, the less I realized I knew. Until now, the biggest "truth" I know is that I pretty much don't know nothin' at all.

After a long life, a body begins to see that the truth changes from person to person and situation to situation. You also begin to see that most folks are not very interested in hearin' the "truth" even on the rare occasion that some dang fool comes up with some.

This is not always true. Some people are hungry for the truth. There are scientists who are burnin' to find out how the universe works and reporters who are out to uncover corruption in the world and preachers who are out to expose the dark side of the soul.

In fact, lots of people are real interested in uncovering the "truth" about other folks' private business. This kind of "truth" is liable to get us all a titter, but even talk show hosts, tabloid journalists and town gossips have enough sense to stay way from the most excruciatin' dangerous truth of all... the truth about themselves.