The American psyche: all about honesty, and completely contrived

Either the Republicans Go Or I Do "Oscar Wilde, no stranger to memoir - though he actually did hard time while writing his heartbreaking De Profundis - decried American art because of its tedious obsession with veracity. A tendency he traced to George Washington, with his stirring tale of chopping down a cherry tree, then declaring he couldn't lie about it. The anecdote, Wilde noted, perfectly exemplifies the American psyche: all about honesty, and completely contrived."