Candor

Candor (pronounced kan-der)

(1) The state or quality of being frank, open, and sincere in speech or expression; candidness.

(2) Freedom from bias; fairness; impartiality; the quality of the disinterested comment.

(3) Kindliness (obsolete except in the most abstract (“cruel to be kind”) sense).

(4) Purity (obsolete).

(5) Whiteness, brilliance; purity of shade (obsolete)

1350-1400: From the Middle English, from the French candour, from the Late Latin candor (purity, openness), from the Classical Latin candidus & candidum (whiteness) from candēre (to shine, to be white), from the primitive Indo-European root kand- (to shine).  A legacy of the Classical Latin candidus & candidum survives in English as “candidate”.  In the Rome of Antiquity, a tradition arose among politicians to wear the most immaculately white toga that could be found, so that they might leave the best impression.  Originally, the Latin candidatus meant literally “a person dressed all in white” but in time it came to mean “one seeking office by election”.  There’s a link also with incandescent (white and glowing) and modern meaning of candid come from a figurative use of “pure white” in the sense of “frank, honest and unadorned”.  The other derivation in English from candēre is candle, and that’s not related to candles being white (which originally they rarely were) but the brightness of the light they offered when lit.  Candle dates probably from the eighth or ninth centuries and was from the Middle English candel, from the Old English candel (candle), from the Latin candēla (candle), from the verb candeō (be white, bright, shining; I shine).

Depending on context, the synonyms for candor can include frankness, honesty, sincerity, equity, fairness & parrhesia while the antonyms typically used include deception, fraud, lie, untruth (or, in the case of crooked Hillary Clinton “I may have misspoken”).  In English, the alternative (mostly UK although also used in parts of the Commonwealth, notably Canada (which is presumed to be the influence from the French-speaking population which uses the same spelling)) spelling is candour white the spelling in Italian & French is candour and in Portuguese, candor.  Candor is a noun and candid is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is candors.

The original meaning in English (whiteness) dating from circa 1500, didn’t long survive the shift in meaning (circa 1600) to "openness of mind, impartiality, frankness”, something which occurred under the influence of French, the borrowing essentially from the French candied.  The familiar (and probably more frequently used) related forms are the adjectives candid and the adverb candidly; the noun candidness is rare.  Less common are the derived forms rarely used beyond the literarure of political science and literary criticism, the adjectives pseudocandid & quasi-candid and the adverb pseudocandidly.  The first use in photography was noted in 1929 and in television in the 1960s, both suggesting something spontaneous or un-staged material and while the meaning is still understood, in the age of TikTok and “reality” television, most now treat the use with some scepticism.  In politics, the quality of candidness is much prized by voters and there is evidence to suggest politicians can benefit from telling the truth although most seem still to take a more cautionary approach and assume that if they’re truthful, people will be so appalled as to not vote for them.  Other, more sophisticated, types understand candor can be to their advantage and have learned to deploy it (occasionally) or (more typically) have perfected faking it.  Both can work.     

Although clinicians have constructed fine diagnostics distinctions between them, among lay-people the terms “compulsive lying”, “pathological lying”, “mythomania” and “habitual lying” are all used to refer to those who tell falsehoods out of desire, habit or venality and sometimes for no apparent reason.  The condition is of course about as old as the first human interactions but was first described in the medical literature in 1891 by German psychiatrist Anton Delbrück (1862-1944) who wrote the case studies of five of his most extravagantly untruthful patients, labelling the behavior pseudologia phantastica (literally something like “a fantastic study of lying” and pseudologia fantastica in US English).  For clinicians, the distinction essentially is that a pathological liar is one who lies simply to get what they want and with little or no self-awareness while a compulsive liar tells untruths simply out of habit, even when the lie serves no purpose and confers no advantage.

There’s no consensus among clinicians about whether compulsive lying should be listed as a stand-alone diagnosis and even in the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR (2022)) it’s not recognized it as a separate mental health condition although compulsive lying does appear as a component and symptom of several conditions including bipolar disorder (the old manic-depression), attention deficit hyperactivity (ADHD), impulse control disorder, substance dependency disorder, borderline personality disorder, anti-social personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.  The DSM notes also that it’s rare for compulsive lying to indicate psychosis and that patients who lie compulsively often have a high degree of self-awareness and are thus not distanced from reality.

Lies, lies and damn lies.  Crooked Hillary Clinton

Whether from fear of retribution, being cancelled or actual Arkancide, it seems no clinician has ever published their assessment of whether crooked Hillary Clinton should be thought a pathological or compulsive liar.  Of course, given the wealth of the material one would need to review, it may be just too big a job, there being only so many hours in a day.  There may anyway be some overlap and however her casual relationship with truth might be diagnosed, the lying is certainly habitual though whether candid or not, crooked Hillary occasionally is caught telling the truth: 

“If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle”:  Candid.  It didn’t work but, lacking a strategic plan, this was her campaign team’s best attempt to develop an effective media-management tactic.  The pantsuits actually attracted more interest but even though intended as a feminist statement (and they certainly weren’t successful as a fashion statement), their most noted impact was as a gift to the cartoonists and meme-makers who quickly latched onto the orange pantsuit as an analogue for prison jumpsuits.  

“Probably my worst quality is that I get very passionate about what I think is right”.  Not candid.  Hillary Clinton has no sense of right and wrong, just rat-cunning in working out what’s in her personal interest.  Rare modesty though, some of her qualities are much worse.

Getting to the truth: Crooked Hillary Clinton lands in Bosnia, 1996. 

“I remember landing under sniper fire”:  Not candid.  This was just a lie. When landing at a Bosnian airport in 1996 (during one of the civil wars the Balkan states have from time-to-time), crooked Hillary was presented with a bunch of flowers by a little girl.  Later, when the lie was exposed, she couldn’t be candid even in her confession.  Refusing to admit she lied, she said she “misspoke”, adding “On a couple of occasions in the last weeks, I just said some things that I knew not to be the case."  That actually meant “I lied”.

“Aww don't feel noways tired. I've come too faarrr from where I started frum”:  Not candid, this was crooked Hillary’s fake Southern drawl, adopted while speaking at a church, south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Apparently thinking she could still get away with the way things were done in 1949, she fooled nobody, presumably, not even herself.

“We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good”:  Candid.  This is a glimpse of crooked Hillary’s elitist, dictatorial, fascist character and whatever she planned to take away from others, she would never have to sacrifice a thing.

“God bless the America we are trying to create”:  Probably not candid; there is scant evidence crooked Hillary’s alleged Christianity is sincere and is about as convincing as Donald Trump’s piety.  She also said “I have to confess that it's crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian” and that was both candid and a reasonable critique of much of the modern Republican Party, the beliefs of some members distant from what the New Testament reveals about the thoughts of Christ.

Lips moving: Some possibility of untruthfulness.

“I have said that I'm not running and I'm having a great time being pres, …being a first-term senator”:  Not candid.  This came at a time when crooked Hillary was still telling her New York constituents she was committed only to representing them.  As deluded as she feels entitled, she still thinks the Democratic nomination in 2024 might be possible if the DNC works out Joe Biden is senile and even she might be a better candidate.

“Who is going to find out? These women are trash. Nobody's going to believe them”: Candid, this is what she really thinks.  Crooked Hillary has utter contempt for anyone except the rich people her husband’s career has allowed her to mix with.  In fairness, this attitude is one of the characteristics of second-wave feminism and beyond, the focus always on tiny elites from various fashionable group identities, the women who serve the coffee and empty the trash bins barely acknowledged.  

“If I didn't kick his ass every day, he wouldn't be worth anything”:  A Candid comment from crooked Hillary about her husband and probably true; he’d never have made it without her and vice-versa.

“My mother named me after Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008)”.  The claim was based on her finding his climbing of Mount Everest so inspiring, thus explaining the double-l spelling of her name.   However, the first successful ascent of Everest did not take place until half a decade after her birth.  The story was later “clarified” when a Clinton spokeswoman said she was not named after the famous mountaineer but the account “...was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add.”  Despite this, it remains unclear if crooked Hillary lied about her own name or was accusing her mother of lying.  Still, given everything else, “…at this point, what difference does it make?”

“We have a lot of kids who don't know what works means. They think work is a four-letter word.”  Candid and to be fair, this one is linguistically defensible, the phrase “four-letter-word” having a meaning beyond the literal.

Candid admissions: Lindsay Lohan as spokesperson for lawyer.com, 2018.