When does résumé puffery go from something embarrassing if common to something pathological? Exaggerations on a résumé are fairly common – up to 43% of résumés contain at least one exaggeration, according to one group. Serial liar Mark Kirk, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, has been caught in his 11th résumé lie. This time he was caught exaggerating his time as a nursery school teacher.
A leader of the church in upstate New York where Representative Mark S. Kirk of Illinois claims he worked as a nursery school teacher said on Friday that he had overstated his role there.
The leader, Sally Grubb, a member of the administrative council at Forest Home Chapel, a Methodist church in Ithaca, N.Y., said Mr. Kirk had a limited role while working part-time in a work-study program while he was a student at Cornell University nearly three decades ago.
“He was never, ever considered a teacher,” Ms. Grubb said in a telephone interview after researching the history of Mr. Kirk’s association with the nursery school. “He was just an additional pair of hands to help a primary teaching person.”
…
In an interview Friday, Ms. Grubb said that she had told a representative of the Kirk campaign of her concerns when the campaign contacted her on Thursday to try to verify Mr. Kirk’s time at the nursery. She said she had spoken to the teacher who led what was then a play group that met in the church basement. The teacher had a “vague recollection” of having him as a work-study student, Ms. Grubb said, but she did not remember his name. She added that Mr. Kirk did not have major responsibilities at the play group, like creating lesson plans, and he was assistant who played with the children.
Probably one of the worst job in politics right now has to be Mark Kirk’s résumé checker.
Here’s the running tally of lies that Mark Kirk has been caught telling about his own experience:
(1) falsely claimed he served “in” Operation Iraqi Freedom
(2) falsely claimed to “command the war room in the Pentagon”
(3) falsely claimed to have won the U.S. Navy’s Intelligence Officer of the Year award
(4) falsely claimed to have been shot at by the Iraqi Air Defense network
(5) falsely claimed to be a veteran of Desert Storm
(6) falsely claimed to be the only lawmaker to serve during Operation Iraqi Freedom
(7) falsely claimed to have been shot at in Kosovo
(8) falsely claimed to have been shot at in Kandahar
(9) falsely claimed to have been repeatedly “deployed” to Afghanistan
(10) falsely claimed not to have violated Defense Department rules on mingling politics with his military service.