This isn't what it looks like!

"It's not what it looks like, I swear!" Don't you feel like this is the kind of thing that the television-movie-allegory-archetypal-classic character says when he gets caught cheating on his wife?

Here's a thought: if it's obvious, why would they say it, as if to cover it up?

Lying, as Franken says at the end of his book on the political aspect of the subject, causes the liars to believe in their own lies.

With this critical lens, I enter this: in some bizarre twist, I think the idiot who gets caught cheating really believes this when he says it. At least, he believes it to the extent that he says it out loud in outright absurdity. In this regard, this man is to be pitied. He believes the wrong set of appearances.