Daily Dialogue — November 2, 2011
“I read this study in Time magazine when I was at Cornell, which is an Ivy League school, and there were people, including my mother, who never believed I would make it into an Ivy League school. Maybe Ginger, who I met in marching in the eighth grade. And the study said people had nice, sympathetic feelings about people who were adopted, and treated them better. So I made up this adoption story, and people did treat me better. And when I got a job, one of my professors told people at Ralston Purina that I was this amazing guy that had accomplished all this in spite of being adopted. And so it was really other people who spread the story, not me. Although I admit it was wrong to start it and everything, it was other people who kept it going, even the people at ADM.”
— Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), The Informant (2009), screenplay by Scott Z. Burns, based on a book by Kurt Eichenwald
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is lies. The Informant suggested by churnage.
Trivia: This story was the subject of the 9–15–2000 episode (#168) of This American Life entitled “The Fix is In.”
Dialogue On Dialogue: The irony is that sometimes when a character lies, that lie tells a truth about their character. What truths do we learn about Whitacre from him having told the lie that he was adopted?