the waitress told the detectives, in reality, the wife had thrown a spoon, but each time the writer retold the story, the episode had gotten more violent, and more harmful.

If that's not "confabulation", de Troy, it's a twin sister.

Actually, I think of your example more as "acclimatization" than "confabulation" ... which is why taking liberties with the truth is said to be a very slippery slope.

If we repeat an embellishment often enough, we might end up believing it ourselves.

Unfortunately, there is often no end to it.

One embellishment leads to another until, like the Enron fiasco, it blows up in our face.

As Shakespeare's King Duncan said: "I am steeped so far in blood that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er."

Shakespeare's King Duncan didn't begin the tragedy as a wicked man.

He was a victim of degrees of wickedness.

As we all are, of course.

Who was it who said?

"There is so much good in the worst of us
And so much bad in the best of us
That it hardly behooves any of us
To speak ill of the rest of us."

There's a lesson in that
Not just for a gnat.