From the
New York Times:
- What is bullshit, after all? Mr. Frankfurt points out it is neither fish nor fowl. Those who produce it certainly aren't honest, but neither are they liars, given that the liar and the honest man are linked in their common, if not identical, regard for the truth.
"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth," Mr. Frankfurt writes. "A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it."
The bullshit artist, on the other hand, cares nothing for truth or falsehood. The only thing that matters to him is "getting away with what he says," Mr. Frankfurt writes. An advertiser or a politician or talk show host given to bullshit "does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it," he writes. "He pays no attention to it at all."
We call the Bush administration liars, but I think this is a much more fitting description. These people are the Michelangelos of bullshit, and the so-called professional media are their willing shovelers, because bullshit, especially good bullshit, sells.
Digby reminds us, every day, of what anchorman Howard Beale, in the movie
Network said:
- We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true. But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube. You eat like the tube. You even think like the tube. In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion.
I think that's why there are so many of us bloggers out here, we're just mad as hell and not gonna take this bullshit anymore. We know it's an uphill fight, because so many people
like the bullshit. It always sounds better than real life. But listening too much to bullshit artists, and especially these bullshit Michelangelos, is a dangerous thing. Just ask anyone involved in the bullshit war in Iraq.
Cup O' Joe - Blog Of The Working Man!