XENOPHONZ opened this issue on Mar 04, 2008 · 57 posts
XENOPHONZ posted Thu, 06 March 2008 at 2:46 PM
In a way, her behavior might be similar to people who compulsively confess to having committed every crime that's in the news, or to people who have Munchausen's Syndrome -- but I'd say that this woman's actions went well beyond the norm for either of those. Or at least I'd say that she was far more successful than most in practicing the art of sympathetic attention-getting. But to me: the things that she did smack of a long-term, well-thought-out, and systematic plan: more like the deliberate dealings of a con artist than like the spur-of-the-moment fantasies of a mentally ill person. Especially since other people conspired in helping her to tell the lie.
But even if it turns out that she is mentally ill, the central problem here has to do with the fact that the NYT's fell so hard for her story -- and that they went as far as they did with it.