Michael Vaughn, an incumbent in the Maryland House of Delegates who is running to keep his seat, just hit a little bump in the road. Not that being caught in a lie about one's biography is considered much of a problem in modern politics anymore, but Vaughn's is a real doozy.You see, Vaughn claims to have played for the Dallas Cowboys for 3 years. One might think that this boast wouldn't be much of a help to a guy who represents the district where the Washington Redskins play. They are, after all, the bitter rivals of the Cowboys. But the claim becomes more of a problem when a local newspaper discloses the fact that Michael Vaughn never played one day for the 'Boys -- or for any other NFL team.
Following the report, Vaughn went into the usual cycle: an angry denial of the expose', then a little backpedaling while still maintaining a version of the original claim, then finally an admission when the fiction became obvious. But even then, the admission was coupled by blaming someone else for the lie. (It's all my webmaster's fault!)
The mainstream media deserves to be red-faced over missing this story. After all, Vaughn has been in the Maryland House of Delegates since 1983. But even when Vaughn's balloon was punctured by a local paper (the Washington City Paper), they've failed to follow up. Indeed, except for a couple of notices in the Dallas market and a few sports bloggers, the story of a lying politician right outside the District of Columbia is getting no play at all.
Maybe it's because Michael Vaughn is a Democrat, a fact that went unmentioned in the original story and in every follow up article I've read: Yahoo Sports, a Dallas Cowboys blog hosted by the Dallas Morning News, Blue Star (another Cowboys blog), and the Sports Grid.
Of course, it could mean something simpler; namely, that one more lying politician in the D.C. area just isn't considered newsworthy nowadays..
