Great column by Frank Rich in Sunday's New York Times about the truth these days. We live in the decade of Truthiness; credibility, at this moment in American culture, is based upon the ring of truth or "Truthiness," rather than actuality:
"IF James Frey hadn't made up his own life, Tom Wolfe would have had to invent it for him. The fraudulent memoirist is to the early 21st century what Mr. Wolfe's radical-chic revelers were to the late 1960's and his Wall Street "masters of the universe" were to the go-go 1980's: a perfect embodiment of the most fashionable American excess of an era.
As Oprah Winfrey, the ultimate arbiter of our culture, has made clear, no one except pesky nitpickers much cares whether Mr. Frey's autobiography is true or not, or whether it sits on a fiction or nonfiction shelf at Barnes & Noble. Such distinctions have long since washed away in much of our public life. What matters most now is whether a story can be sold as truth, preferably on television. The mock Comedy Central pundit Stephen Colbert's slinging of the word "truthiness" caught on instantaneously last year precisely because we live in the age of truthiness.
At its silliest level, this is manifest in show-biz phenomena like Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, juvenile pop stars who merchandised the joy of their new marriage as a lucrative MTV reality series before heading to divorce court to divvy up the booty. But if suckers want to buy fictional nonfiction like "Newlyweds" or "A Million Little Pieces" as if they were real, that's just harmless diversion.
It's when truthiness moves beyond the realm of entertainment that it's a potential peril."...
Now that Truthiness (and Bullshit, as described by Harry Frankfurt in his scholarly little tome, On Bullshit) has been pointed out to me, I'm starting to see it everywhere. Latest example: I just looked up Larry the Cable Guy (the drawling "Git 'er done" redneck comedian) on Wikipedia after hearing a reference to him on TV, and found out that he's not a real southerner, but a guy that grew up in Nebraska going to a private school! Still, I bet he's the straight up real deal to his audience... his act is down-home truthy! Just for kicks, keep your eyes peeled for Truthiness over the next few days. Make up your own truthy stories! Join the suspension-of-disbelief fun!
