ABSTRACT

The notion of truthiness seems perfectly attuned to this moment of sociopolitical climate change when pre-millennial exuberance and post-9/11 earnestness have both cooled into the irony-rich atmosphere of the Later Iraq/ Afghanistan Period. The notion seems uniquely suited to thrive in a mildly noxious climate that, despite enthusiasms released by a presidential campaign, retains elements of both a malaise about the conduct of politics and a moral panic about the direction of culture. A few years ago popular culture assured us that “the truth is out there.” But not long ago in the form of pre-release advertising for the film “Michael Clayton,” George Clooney’s starring vehicle as a compromised lawyer, popular culture asserted that “the truth can be adjusted.” In the same vein the second season of “Madmen,” a melodramatic send-up of the advertising business in the 1960s, promised that the cable series would reveal “where the truth lies.” Yet a third manifestation of the moment is the rise to near-bestsellerdom of

a brief meditation entitled On Bullshit by Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt.1 With reference to the domains of commerce and politics Frankfurt defines bullshit as simply indifference to truth. Unlike liars who must engage truth in their attempt to deny it, bullshitters just plain ignore it in pursuit of their goals. “Your call is important to us” and “Your satisfaction is guaranteed” are annoyingly familiar examples from the domain of commerce. “Mission Accomplished” and “America is safer today” are more ominous examples from the domain of politics. And from yet another domain of human affairs: “Oh God, that was the best ever!” and “No, it’s not you; it’s me!” In all cases Frankfurt’s concept adds a valuable third category of untruth. The Bush administration was a compelling testament to the analytical usefulness of the concept. Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein: mistake, lie or bullshit? And yet I do not think Frankfurt’s succinct definition of bullshit as disregard

of the truth makes it synonymous with truthiness. Plausibility, for example, I take to be an essential element of truthiness but, as some of the previous examples indicate, not necessarily of bullshit. In so far as authorial intent can be accepted as offering insight into meaning we can turn to Stephen Colbert.

“Truthiness is, anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you,” said the current dean of America’s fake news people when coining the term on his program. “As a journalist, it’s not my place to editorialize. I’m here to objectively divide the facts into categories of good and evil. Then you make up your own minds.” The last line is, of course, a parodic skewering of the Fox News mantra,

“We report. You decide.” Resisting the temptation to reminisce about the best of Colbert’s barbs, here is just one from his widely celebrated comments to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2006. “The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady,” Colbert said, nodding toward President George W. Bush. “You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.” Thus did the satirist speak truth to a purveyor of truthiness. Thinking about Colbert’s introduction of truthiness on his program, how-

ever, wipes the grin from my face. As someone who has written a great deal about how some of the best news reporting does – and should – “feel the news at you” and “objectively divide the facts into categories of good and evil,” I wonder who, in addition to hucksters and politicians, Colbert is teasing as purveyors of truthiness. Is it the news media or, even if unwittingly, is it us – academic critics of media? With this in mind I suggest that we, as critics sympathetic to good journalism, take this cultural moment – a moment marked in the phrase of New York Times columnist Frank Rich by the “decline and fall of truth in Bush’s America”2 – as an opportunity to introduce a useful conception of truth into our own theoretical program.