The truth is...

Perhaps it's just me, but I seem to be hearing a lot of people using the phrase "the truth is..." lately. And not to rebut a false statement, or anything, just out-of-the-blue starting off a sentence with it. Someone asks a question and the person replies "Well, the truth is...."

It strikes me as an odd construction, like tacking "No, really, I'm not lying" on to a sentence. Explicitly pointing out what you're saying is true shouldn't be necessary, right?

Anyway, it first caught my ear in a commercial for an over-the-counter analgesic some months ago. And of course, John Kerry has said it in a number of contexts, including his famous "the truth is, George Bush has made America weaker, running the most arrogant, reckless, inept and ideological foreign policy in the modern history of our country." I heard it used at the convention, and from the pundits.  It seems I've heard it an inordinate number of times from people in in everyday situations, not just in the media.

Has the phrase simply caught my attention and I've become sensitized to it? Every time I hear it, it registers and gets added to my mental tally? Or is there an actual flourishing of this meme, much the way the phrase "tipping point" was suddenly on the lips of every pundit for a month or two? The way pundits will all pull out "sea change" every once in a while.

If it is an actual meme-blossom, how can we account for it? Does it express a hunger for truth-telling after enduring the most disingenuous administration in memory? The verbal equivalent of penicillin? Or, one could take the dimmer view that we're listening to the evolution of a rote mantra. As if the phrase were a talisman to ward off the elevated threat that someone speaking publicly is telling a bald-faced lie. That words are now worth less and we're suffering from verbal inflation.

I, for one, choose to believe I'm seing the expression of a renewed yearning for honesty that spurs an unsatisfied electorate to vote their conscience. Perhaps then we can pack up this musty funk that hangs over us all and store it in our collective mental attic, in that dark back corner next to McCarthyism and Watergate.

Here Comes the Sun - George Harrison Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, And I say it’s all right Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here Here comes the sun, here comes the sun And I say it’s all right Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here Here comes the sun, here comes the sun And I say it’s all right Sun, sun, sun, here it comes... Sun, sun, sun, here it comes... Sun, sun, sun, here it comes... Sun, sun, sun, here it comes... Sun, sun, sun, here it comes... Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, And I say it’s all right It’s all right