WHAT ABOUT THAT EYEBALL LIE
DETECTOR?
By Dalton Roberts
Chattanooga Times Free Press
1-11-02
Did you read about that new gizmo that can look into your
eyes and tell when you are lying? After all the traumatic change we've
been through lately, I hate to tell you but we haven't seen anything
yet. If the use of that machine becomes mandatory, it will turn the
world upside down.
How can they not make it mandatory? What's more important to our
survival than knowing when people are telling the truth?
No more terrorists seizing planes. Each person coming on a plane
will be asked, "Are you a terrorist? Do you plan to seize this
plane?" When their eyes pulse out a "boing boing," they
will be handcuffed immediately and hauled off to Guantanamo. At that
moment the scripture shall be fulfilled -- the one saying it's just as
bad to think something as to do it. There will be no need to examine
luggage or run people through metal detectors. How can such a device be
anything but good?
There will be no more need for trials of suspected criminals and
absolutely no more convictions of the innocent. Just ask, "Did you
do this?" and look into the eyes. Then it's straight home or
straight to the big house. Anything that replaces lawyers can't be all
bad.
They will surely have a little portable eyeball gizmo you can
carry with you to the doctor so you can hold it up to his eyes when you
ask, "Do I really need this operation?" Boing, boing boing!
Anything that keeps you from being split open like a watermelon can't be
all bad.
There will be no more adulterers running free. When your darling
comes home and says he has been working late at the office, hold the
marital eyeball gizmo to their peepers. Who will go for the hanky-panky
when they are positive they will be caught? Anything that keeps those
sweet things out of the arms of beer-breathed honky-tonk hussies and
cozied up at home with their own adorable companions...now tell me, can
that be all bad?
Teachers will certainly be equipped with them. If such a
diagnostic tool had been available when I was in school, I would have
been expelled in the first grade instead of the tenth. "Dalton, do
you like school? Are you going to be a good boy? Did you pull Alice's
hair? Did you put that frog in my desk drawer?" Right there's four
loud boings and I'm back home at downtown Watering Trough with my Mama
and good dog, Brownie.
With unbridled confidence in our free enterprise system, I am
certain they will eventually come up with a "new and improved"
model that will shoot you right between the eyes when you lie to it.
Talk about population control! But can't we agree that anything capable
of thinning out the liars in our midst can't be all bad? Like me, I am
sure you know some people who will still lie to the "new and
improved" model. I had an uncle like that. He just loved lying. A
little bullet between the eyes wouldn't register one tiny tremor of fear
on his Richter Scale.
The bad news, folks, is that it would take laws and laws are made
by politicians. They cannot and will not allow it. Think of the boing
boings we would have heard in the Clinton years alone. And when Dubyah
was asked about his wild and wooly college years. Gary Condit would now
be known as "Mr. Boing Boing."
It's just awful to get so excited about the possibilities of such
an advanced piece of equipment, and then realize it can never have the
wide application it richly merits. Even something that could stop
terrorist hijackings must go the way of the buffalo.
Tell me before we kiss the eyeball lie detector goodbye. Wouldn't
it be wonderful to see that new and improved model used on Condit?