And we wonder why so many kids are so messed up these days...

The initial story headline that I saw simply said: "Hannah Montana Concert Winner Lied in Essay Describing Father's Death in Iraq." I shook my head as I skimmed the news articles and almost didn't bother reading the story. After all, kids do lie sometimes when they want something or are trying to avoid consequences, right? That's just something that we expect from kids.
However I did read the story, and was surprised and disgusted to find out that the six-year old girl's allegedly adult mother, Pricilla Ceballos of Texas, helped her daughter make up the essay about how her daddy was killed in Iraq as a way to win the tickets that a childrens' store chain was offering. "We did the essay and that's what we did to win," Priscilla Ceballos, the mother, said in an interview with Dallas TV station KDFW. "We did whatever we could do to win."

And what's worse, according to her comments in this story, Ceballos is not only not apologetic, she'd defending her fraud by claiming that "we never said that it was true." She's not even remotely remorseful.

Wow. So in Pricilla Ceballos sick, twisted, totally dishonest mind, it's ok to say whatever you want in order to beat other people out of a prize or scam someone into giving you something so long as you don't follow your claims up with a notarized statement claiming that what you just said is the truth. Well following that logic, Ceballos probably thinks that she should be able to get welfare payments and a government-subsidized house just by claiming that she's dying from some rare disease and unable to work even if that's not the case, so long as she doesn't pinky-swear that she's not lying when she fills out the application. She probably has no qualms about applying for credit cards and claiming an annual income of $300,000 per year when she really makes $19,000 a year, just because she really wants the cards and no one asked her to promise that her application was honestly filled out.

But what's worse is that this calculating liar and thief--yes, dishonestly obtaining something by lying is fraud and theft--is apparently teaching her daughter that it's perfectly acceptible to go through life defrauding others and that there's nothing wrong with lying to get over.

Now the organizers of the contest that Ceballos' baby liar "won" are contemplating taking the Hannah Montana concert tickets back, as well they should. But if for some reason they do not, I hope that sometime during this concert, this Hannah Montana person (whoever that is) points out Ceballos and her daughter and leads the entire concert audience in a few chants of "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"

And let's not forget that somewhere out there is another child who would have won this contest honestly but for Ceballos' dishonesty and fraud. What about that kid? The contest orgainzers need to grow a spine and yank the tickets back from Ceballos and her lying little spawn and give them to the child who rightfully deserves tham.