Donald Trump lied 30,573 times during his first presidency, according to the Washington Post. In a single 2024 press conference, he told 162 lies, NPR reported. Lying serves some people well. DJ Carey? Not so much.
This once-revered national icon is now stripped of the attention and adulation he craved so much. Instead, he is a broken figure who now only represents disappointment, sadness and betrayal.
The hurling god, as he has been described, this week began a 5½ year prison sentence after his web of lies and betrayals disintegrated around him. In July, Carey pleaded guilty to 10 sample charges of using fraud and deception to cheat people out of money. He scammed people – some of whom he knew well, others he barely knew – out of almost €400,000.
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“He took advantage of people’s good nature and goodwill towards him,” said Judge Martin Nolan at his sentencing. “He exploited the good natures of others and the goodwill he had accumulated by reason of being well known and being an outstanding sporting personality.
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“It’s a very serious crime. It’s reprehensible behaviour, it’s very bad behaviour ... they were good-natured people who wanted to help a person in need and he exploited them.”
Lies can, in a certain sense, get you places, at least for a while. In another time, another country, Trump might be just another bankrupt con man like Carey, but his lies got him all the way to the Oval Office.
But there is a difference. Unlike Carey, Trump never delighted thousands with his sporting artistry. Nor did he exhaust himself driving from charity fundraiser to club awards ceremony to demonstration match. He certainly didn’t do so for no pay, after a day’s grinding work and in between gruelling professional-level training for elite sport.
Eimear Ní Bhraonáin’s recent book, The Dodger: DJ Carey and the Great Betrayal, reveals a man who desperately wanted to be liked and admired. He seemed to live in other people’s eyes, morphing into the person he thought they wanted him to be. Sporting hero? Yes. Devoted family man? Certainly. Glittering celebrity and jet-setting Celtic Tiger magnate? Bring it on. Selflessly courageous cancer sufferer? Sure, if that’s what it takes.
Living through the eyes of others tends to hollow a person out. It weakens your internal compass, untethers you from your values – and it is the central curse of celebrity.
Carey tended to lie quite a lot, even before he snorted the metaphorical cocaine of celebrity and money. At first, it is likely that he lied mainly to please people, to give them what they wanted from him. Tall tales of derring-do, of multiple thefts, burglaries. Illnesses endured and operations miraculously recovered from.
Trump once said to his biographer that he didn’t like to analyse himself because he might not like what he saw. And this comment perfectly illustrates what we know well about the human mind – that it can split and self-deceive. Much of the mind is made up by clusters of habits – of behaviour, emotion, behaviour – that are learned over a lifetime, repeated so many thousands of times so that they feel inevitable and indelible. Many of these run automatically as habits – we couldn’t drive or cycle without them, for example.
Lying can be one such habit. A lie temporarily alleviates anxiety by deflecting criticism, censure, shock. It buys the liar time or sympathy. (Whew, she won’t find out ... Of course I will pay you back ... I knew nothing about that ... I am really sick, so you can’t blame me ...)
But in the longer term, lies corrode human trust and isolate the liar. Great wealth, celebrity or power can offer the illusion of connection to fill the liar’s void of human connection. “Friends”, in this distorted world, want you for what you are and what you can give them, not for who you are.
Celebrity tends to crush people unless they have strong values constraining their egos. Many celebrities successfully manage this pressure. But some succumb because their values lead to decisions that ultimately break them.
Carey was – literally – unique in the world of celebrity in the sense that he was caught in a vice. He was crushed between the noble dictates of GAA voluntarism and the glitz of fame.
He was a hurling god – but a god who had to drive 1,500 miles per week selling his cleaning products to pubs while wracked with anxiety about accounts, taxes and order books. And then speak at the county dinner, deliver his kids to GAA, take libel actions, attend charity matches.
An article by Colm Keena resurfaced something revealing Carey said to a reporter for The Irish Times in the 1990s. “When you’re pulling the hair out of your head on a Sunday during a game wondering where a cheque is going to come to meet the bank on Monday, that’s when it’s tough.”
Of course, thousands of elite GAA players manage a version of this week after week. Many are gods – but local gods, bound to community. And if – as occasionally it must – the adulation shows signs of going to their heads, they will be gently pulled back to earth by their manager, their community, their team-mates. Brian Cody did his best to try this with Carey.
Despite the monstrous things he has done, Carey deserves some sympathy. Why? Because he was a willing participant in a sort of Frankenstein experiment: plucked from mere human and elevated to celebrity god, yet expected to behave like both simultaneously. Ultimately he was responsible – he made the decisions – but it was an impossible tightrope he attempted to walk.
[ Unthinkable: We lie to ourselves more than to othersOpens in new window ]
There is a reason celebrities tend to mix with celebrities. Because they risk losing themselves if they mix with mortals. Many mortals treat them differently because they want a piece of their mana to brush off on them – either by worship or attack. Ultimately, it proved impossible for DJ to be both the ordinary GAA community guy and the god. Something had to give.
Perhaps in prison, Carey will work out how to explain his actions to himself, and to the people who trusted him and believed him.
Ireland is a generous country and he became a parasite on that generosity. But it is also a forgiving place. If he can lay himself open – to himself first and then to those he betrayed – there just might be a way back for him.
Ian Robertson is a neuropsychologist and the author of How Confidence Works and The Winner Effect
