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- <text id=92TT0176>
- <title>
- Jan. 27, 1992: American Notes:California
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Jan. 27, 1992 Is Bill Clinton For Real?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 25
- American Notes
- CALIFORNIA
- Political Fiction
- </hdr><body>
- <p> A gruff, gray-haired businessman who cried because he had to
- lay off workers at his small shop. A farmworker idled by an
- Arctic freeze. A carpenter who could find no work framing houses.
- In his State of the State speech in early January, California
- Governor Pete Wilson recalled meeting each of these recession
- victims and told his listeners, "Tough times demand compassion,
- realism and honesty." How about truth? When reporters from the
- San Jose Mercury News went out in search of these unfortunates,
- they discovered they were fictional characters invented by the
- Governor. His staff defended the fanciful encounters as "an
- allegorical statement" and as a "composite" of real people
- Wilson had met. No dice, said Marvin Kalb of Harvard's Barone
- Center on the Press: "This demonstrates the need that
- politicians feel to mislead the public."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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