(You look great in those jeans, and other white lies)

I get that the majority of people make it very unpleasant to say accurate things, but it doesn't seem to matter if it's a white lie or not - saying "those jeans make you look fat" and "not all soldiers are heroes" both get you punished for being accurate. There's just a CULTURAL attitude that the latter is a "more important truth" and therefor it's more-excusable to upset people with it.

Change the cultural context and suddenly white lies go away too - I understand it's fairly common amongst autistic people to value accuracy in that regard, for example. I know it's true of my own social group (I've commented numerous times on things that aren't attractive about my girlfriends, or that I simply find personally unpleasant :))