One of the dubious opportunities I had as a writer for the BG News over the summer was the chance to interact and meet with some of the public relations people here at BGSU.

Now, I know, it’s hard to believe that a moral, publicly-funded university like BGSU would even need public relations people.

And make no mistake; hiding things is exactly what these P.R. people are hired to do. They’re given titles like Media Relations Director or Communications Director or Associate Vice President of Something or Other and paid a good deal of money to spin and obfuscate the truth into something favorable for the University.

In the book Animal Farm, by George Orwell, there is a character called Squealer. In the book, the animals on a farm overthrow their human master in a quest for better conditions and equality.

When things don’t turn out as the animals expected, and the pigs become much the same as the humans were, the pig Squealer goes to all of the animals and, “skipping from side to side and whisking his tail,” explains to them why the pigs get so many privileges that the other animals don’t.

And every time you read a press release or hear some P.R. person speaking, that’s just what they are doing, the literary and oratory equivalent of skipping from side to side and whisking their tails.

Perhaps it’s unfair to compare P.R. people to lying, squealing pigs, but my utter contempt for these people makes it all too easy and impossible to resist.

Although I regard all P.R. people with feelings bordering on disgust, one P.R. person who has spewed more lies in his life than perhaps anyone has also, on some level, elicited almost a sense of admiration. I’m talking about the hero of all public relations gurus, Mr. Ari Fleischer.

Fleischer was the press secretary for the current Presidential administration until July of 2004. Apparently after the build-up to the war in Iraq even he had had his fill of lying, proving anything is impossible.

I’m something of a masochist, so I made sure to tune in for Ari’s daily press briefings.

Hearing his constant stream of lies and evasions was frustrating for me beyond all reason, but as I mentioned, a sense of almost admiration came over me. I couldn’t help but be amazed by his ability to re-direct questions, reply with half-answers, and do it all with a smile on his face. I could tell he was having a good time up there, watching the press trip over the trail left by his slippery tongue.

Unfortunately, Ari is gone now, replaced by Scott McClellan, a P.R. person whom I almost feel sorry for because, as the press has noted, he almost seems to feel sorry about lying to people.

He’ll never make it, especially in the current Administration whose whole rational is based on misleading people.

But Ari lives on in my memory. Being married, whenever my back is up to the proverbial wall and I need to manipulate logic and truth to find a way out, I think “What would Ari do?”

My oratory skills must not match his though, because my wife can always tell. I guess I’d make a poor P.R. person, seeing that I feel a moral obligation to tell the truth, something foreign to these snakes in business suits.

Now, when I did meet the P.R. person from BGSU, they were very nice. We chatted about our personal lives and writing. They even brought me some water! And the discussion we had was very fruitful and enlightening. But when I went home, I felt dirty. Oh, so dirty.

Aided by a docile press and the all-American aversion to asking questions, P.R. people have run roughshod over every sensibility of honesty and truth.

So the next time you see someone in a business suit explaining why something is a good idea, take it with a huge grain of salt, like the ones on soft pretzels. It’s for your own good.

You’ve been warned.