Face The Music, Forget Replay Of ‘Music Man’

Minutes before the city dropped the ax on its arts director for lying on her resume, the actor who helped hire Carolyn Lair gave me a brief command performance on the woman’s behalf.

“We’re satisfied with the veracity of what she submitted,” said Jack Phillips, president of Spokane’s volunteer Arts Commission and director of the Civic Theatre.

Veracity?

Lair doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

To win her public-paid, $41,000-a-year job last spring, Lair concocted a nonexistent fine arts degree in sculpture from Vancouver, British Columbia’s prestigious Emily Carr School of Art and Design.

She lied about being enrolled in a master’s program at Simon Fraser University, also in Vancouver. She lied about getting her bachelor’s degree there in 1982. She actually completed it 10 years later.

Veracity?

Phillips knows better. He sat next to me during an interview where Lair admitted all of the above, point by point.

By trying to cover for Lair’s lying ways, Phillips has sent out a shameful message: that character doesn’t matter anymore.

Has dishonesty become such an everyday part of life that lying to get a job is OK as long as we like the lair, er liar?

Or maybe Phillips thought he was performing a scene from Meredith Wilson’s classic musical, “The Music Man.” A trained actor like Phillips would certainly be familiar with that old chestnut.

“The Music Man” tells the story of a smooth talker named Harold Hill who hoodwinks River City Iowans into buying band instruments for their kids. As credentials, Hill claims a degree from a hoity toity Gary, Ind., music conservatory - class of ought-five.

Suspicious, Marion the Librarian plays detective. She checks the conservatory records only to find that Hill is a complete fraud. But Marion is so taken by the likable flimflammer that she covers for him.

Sound familiar?

Just listening to Phillips made me want to start humming “76 Trombones” and some of the other bouncy numbers. “Gary Indiana, Gary Indiana, Gary Indiana, let me say it once again…

Unlike the play, there will be no happy ending in the Carolyn Lair mess. Her firing is a huge blow for Spokane’s arts community, which always seems to be struggling for credibility.

But let’s get something perfectly clear.

While Phillips and some of the arts commissioners are furious with me for exposing this mess, Lair brought this trouble to our River City. She stuck her neck in a noose the second she dared send a bogus resume to the Arts Commission.

But hey, maybe Jack and his pals are right. Maybe phonying up a resume really isn’t such a big deal.

Now that the city has an opening for an arts director, it might want to consider my vast qualifications for the job.

Those vicious rumors that I only have a pedestrian journalism degree from Eastern Washington University are totally unfounded.

The Arts Commission will be amazed once it gets a load of my impressive credentials.

According to my newly typed resume, I have a doctorate in art from the renowned Rhode Island School of Design. It should be noted that I worked my way through that school while interpreting Mandarin Chinese at the United Nations.

Of course, that was the year I also won the Heisman Trophy. And danced with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the American Ballet Theatre in New York.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

As you can see, I’m more than qualified to fill Lair’s shoes.

Oh, and there’s that Pulitzer Prize I won. Naw, not even the Arts Commission will buy that one.

, DataTimes