FrontPageMagazine.com columnist Lowell Ponte discusses polygraphy in the context of Rep. Gary Condit’s recent polygraph “test.” Excerpt:
A LIE-DETECTOR HAS VINDICATED GARY CONDIT. That was the message the California Congressman’s politically-cunning lawyer Abbe Lowell released to the press late last Friday. Within minutes, Leftist pundits were on television declaring that the Modesto Democrat had reclaimed the high ground from those who suspect a link between Condit and the mysterious May Day disappearance of one of his lovers, 24-year-old intern Chandra Levy.
In ancient Greek drama, when a play’s plot seemed irresolvable the playwright would have a god lowered onto the stage in a basket. The god would then use divine discernment, wisdom, and powers to set things right. This dramatic device has been known ever since as deus ex machina, literally “god from a machine.”
In today’s eroto-political Condit affair we now have seen a comparably stagy device. Call it, if you will, veritas ex machina, literally “truth from a machine.”
No rational person believes Condit, and nobody believes Clinton apologist Abbe Lowell.
But in an age where science has become for millions of Americans the new religion and definer of reality, we are expected to believe what comes out of a magic box full of wires that produces squiggly lines on graph paper. If this machine finds Condit truthful, who are we to doubt?
If your friends have thus been bamboozled, give them copies of this column. The truth is, for many reasons, the Condit lie-detector test is hokum of the shoddiest kind. The mere fact that he would resort to such a flim-flam is powerful evidence of how morally bankrupt and dishonest Condit is.
Why should thinking people distrust and discount this polygraph test? Let me count the ways.