You are missing the point.  Or at least, you are if you're one
of the bazillion people following the Manti Te'o story,
dutifully trying to determine whether the former Notre Dame
football star was the victim or the perpetrator of a bizarre
hoax. Granted, the story is irresistible as one of those
15-minutes-of-fame-kitten-stuck-in-the-well fables without which
people who gather around the water cooler wouldn't have anything
to talk about.  Te'o, a Heisman Trophy runner-up, had generated
an outpouring of sympathy after he played through pain, turning
in a gritty performance that keyed his team to an upset win,
right after learning that his girlfriend and grandmother had
died within hours of each other. The grandmother was real. But
as Deadspin, a sports website, soon discovered, the girlfriend
was not.  Te'o, it turned out, had never met Lennay Kekua. He'd
seen pictures of a woman, he'd spoken to what he thought was a
woman by phone and corresponded with someone online. The
"relationship" was virtual. Te'o says