Many of want to live in history – to see our lives aligned with the big public events of the age. The tragedies, wars, and national triumphs that we hear about shape us, too, so we often see ourselves as tangled up in them. People who lived through the John F. Kennedy assassination, for instance, famously remember where they were when they heard about it.

But sometimes people take their connection to larger events a bit further into the territory of baldface lying. This seems to be the case with “The League” star Steve Rannazzisi, who has claimed for more than a decade to have been working in the World Trade Center when the planes hit on 9/11. A New York Times story today describes the mess he’s now in.

The same very human impulses that led to Brian Williams’ disgrace are at play here