Can I tell you something?
As a boy, I loved watching the famous cop show Dragnet – Google it kids. When Sergeant Joe Friday would pump some chatty innocent bystander for information and after listening to the woman prattle on sharing salacious rumors and overwrought opinions, he’d reproach her by saying, ‘Just the facts, ma’am’. What she said next we viewers all assumed was factual. Sure, there were scofflaws and ne’er-do-wells who dared lie to Jack Webb’s face, but you could always tell they were lying and all of them paid a price for it by the end of the show. Most of the criminals tried their luck with Friday’s partner Bill Gannon, played by Harry Morgan, hoping they had a better shot with the goofy colonel from M*A*S*H.