When the Long Con is Exposed

If you watched the Television programme; Lost, you will recall ‘Sawyer’.    He described how he ran the ‘long con’.

For clarity, a long con is when a person adopts an identity which s/he uses to con people.   That is to fool them to get benefits.  Whether s/he pretends to be an investment banker so as to gather money from investors,  the persona that is worn by the con (wo)man becomes so complete,  it takes up a life of its own.

If that person is exposed to not be who they claimed to be, everything collapses.  The person who ran the con is totally exposed, demeaned, humiliated, and can not regain their confidence.  They slip into ignominy because they have invested every atom of their being into that Con.

Two major celebrities played the long con.

Tiger Woods

He came on the seen as the most boring, conservative gentleman imaginable.    He was a golfer, an unusual profession for a young black man.   He was very good, and got sponsorship from the most distinguished sources.

For many years he was at the very top of the profession.

Then it was revealed he was nothing but a low down ‘ho daddy’, the kind of guy most rappers pretend to be.

Tiger Woods spent years fooling people into thinking he was decent and this con is what inspired his game.  He would step onto the golf course as Mr. Clean, knowing that all the people were fooled.    Playing Mr. Clean, he was a very good golfer, for playing golf was part of his con.

Once his con was exposed and the world knew exactly who and what he was, his golf game slipped.  And now, he is nobody.

Whitney Houston

She played the sweet Christian girl.   She was trash, drug using, whoring trash, but she played the sweet Church girl, and sang in such a wonderful voice.

But she was never that fine upstanding girl, she was a bottom crawler, and all this came out after she married Bobby Brown, who was no better than she was, and never pretended to be.

Once the world learned that she was a drug addict, that she was no lady, she lost her voice.

What does One Thing Have To Do With Another?

People who practice this kind of long con create an identity and attributes that belong to that identity.  When that identity is exposed, they lose the attributes.

An actor, playing a super hero, only has those super powers when he’s in character.  In real life, he doesn’t have any special power.

A Con (Wo)Man doesn’t have the ‘special powers’ as him/herself.  Only in ‘character’.  Once the ‘character’ is killed off, so goes the powers.

Tiger Woods, as long as he could fool the people into thinking he was a decent gentleman, he could play golf.  Golf was his ‘super power’ which belonged to the character he ‘played.’

Whitney Houston could sing as long as she was in character. Once the world saw what she really was, she lost her ‘super power.’