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AUGUST 2006
Stephen Colbert, brilliant satirist and charismatic host of TheColbert Report, has some ideas that can help us understand
what’s so wrong with
our political economic discourse.
O’Connor:
The Political Economics of Stephen Colbert August 2006
Page 1
Stephen Colbert, brilliant satirist, unrepentant
frankenwordsmith
, and charismatic host of The Colbert Report,
1
has recently added another neologism to theEnglish language:
wikiality
. As strange as it may sound,this new concept, together with his previous creation,
truthiness
, can help us understand what's so wrongwith the political economic discourse in the UnitedStates.
Truthiness
According to Wikipedia, "Truthiness is a humorousterm coined by Stephen Colbert in reference to thequality by which a person claims to know somethingintuitively, instinctively, or
from the gut
without regardto evidence, logic, or intellectual examination. Mr.Colbert created this definition of the word during thefirst episode (October 17, 2005) of his satiricaltelevision program The Colbert Report, as the subject of a segment called The Word."
2
"By using the term as part of his satirical routine,Colbert sought to critique the tendency to rely upon
truthiness
, and its use as an appeal to emotion and toolof rhetoric in contemporary socio-political discourse.He particularly applied it to President Bush's modusoperandi in nominating Harriet Miers to the SupremeCourt and in deciding to invade Iraq."Of course, the only way to appreciate Colbert'ssatire is to see it for yourself in this Colbert Report video: The Word Truthiness.
3
As he later told the Associated Press, "you don't look up
truthiness
in a book, you look it up in yourgut." That is, unless you can look it up on Wikipedia, asI did... which brings us to Colbert's second great addition to the English lexicon.
Wikiality
Once again, paraphrasing the brief Wikipediaentry,
wikiality
is portmanteau of
Wikipedia
and
reality
,referring to the representation of truth on Wikipediathat is determined by consensus rather than fact.
4
Asthe next video reveals, Colbert expressed hisappreciation for Wikipedia because it represents aphilosophy similar to his own
truthiness
—
5
To anyone who understands Colbert's shtick, it isobvious that he didn't sincerely mean to denigrateWikipedia nor to incite his viewers to vandalize someof the Wikipedia pages. Unfortunately, some viewersdid and some commentators don't understand why.What he did sincerely intend, in my opinion, was to usethe familiar brand of Wikipedia to illustrate a largerpolitical phenomenon in which
the pursuit
of truthbased on the facts known by a few experts
has beensystematically co-opted by
the construction of truthbased on the values shared by a large populace
. If the so-called
democratization of knowledge
has a dark side, it is perhaps this political phenomenon in which popularopinions override unpopular facts and become knownto just about everyone as legitimate truths.
Beyond the Humor
At the risk of over-exposing my favorite socialtheorist, Jürgen Habermas, with this third reference inas many essays, I think we can once again find a usefulapplication for his universal pragmatics.
6
As Idescribed in Inconvenient Truth
7
and The ThreeLenses of Threat Perception,
8
Habermas has developeda powerful framework that explains the universalconditions necessary for reason, communication, andknowledge.In simplest terms, when we reason andcommunicate we tend to at least implicitly, if not explicitly, raise a set of three distinct validity claimsregarding
what is true
,
what is right
, and
what issincere
. When either one of us has a problem acceptingany of the validity claims raised by the other, we maythrough discourse challenge the claim and make aneffort to come to a mutual understanding of what reallyis true, right, and sincere for each of us. In our idealefforts to validate or invalidate one another's claims,we will refer to
impersonal facts
to determine what istrue,
interpersonal values
to judge what is right, and
personal intentions
to appreciate what is sincere. Allthree types of claims made by both of us would have to
When we communicatewe tend to at least implicitly,if not explicitly, raise a set of three distinct validity claimsregarding
what is true
,
what is right
, and
what is sincere
.
O’Connor:
The Political Economics of Stephen Colbert August 2006
Page 2
be validated before we could declare a sharedunderstanding
—
and even then, we would not necessarily have a mutual
agreement
on all threeclaims.However, of the three validity claims, I think it isthe
truth
claim, supported by impersonally verifiablefacts, that holds the most promise for mutualagreement. This is what most people regard as
knowledge
and it is certainly the linchpin of thescientific method and the first best justification forpolitical and economic policies of those in power. It istherefore no surprise that many of us should be soirritated by the communicative actions of so manypoliticians and pundits, executives and activists, whichseem designed to frustrate all attempts to validateactual truth based on real facts. Stephen Colbert, meet Jürgen Habermas.
My Truth, Your Truth
In
truthiness
we have the essence of a philosophythat one's personal opinion, one's gut feel, is more truethan fact itself and, furthermore, one has a right toexpress this personal
truthiness
without the burden of justification with impersonal facts. So if you don't agree with what I just said about this or that, it's just too bad for you
—
talk to the hand
. The authority whorelies on
truthiness
will tend to reject all attempts byothers to engage in discourse to verify the facts inquestion, either because s/he is being deliberatelydeceptive or because s/he lacks the communicativecompetence to discern the difference between truthand sincerity.Thus, people in positions of power can expresswhat is at best a personal conviction, at worst adishonest deception, in such a way that many peopleget the false impression that they are makingpreviously verified truth claims. As long as they avoidan outright falsehood, a blatantly untrue statement, ora lie under oath that can be used against them in thefuture, they can hide behind the legitimacy of theiroffice or their reputation and spread something otherthan actual truth.
Truthiness
is a catchy term for what I see as thedomain of impersonal, verifiable truth co-opted,colonized, and controlled by the personal, expressivedomain of sincerity, which is not readily susceptible tocritique on purely factual bases. Thus,
my
truth is mine,
your
truth is yours, and
their
truth is theirs
—let’s
alljust agree to disagree.But
truthiness
could not exist on any large scaleunless it was regarded as normatively appropriate by asignificant portion of our culture
—
a sub-culture that refuses to reject such distorted or deceptivecommunicative actions on positive if not also norma-tive grounds. What do we call a norm that says it isacceptable, even desirable, for certain people toexpress
truthiness
without accountability? The Appealto Authority, which is a very powerful and all-too-common logical fallacy by which those people under itsspell will accept the word of an authority who makes a
truthiness
claim based his or her power and prestigerather than the verifiable facts that might actuallysupport the claim.Therefore,
truthiness
manifests in all threedomains of communicative action as
systematically distorted reason and communication
that precludes theshared understanding regarding
what is true
,
what isright
, and
what is sincere
that is its implied goal.
Right Truth, Wrong Truth
In
wikiality
we have a similar, but distinct philosophy that when enough people believe that something
ought to be true
, it seems to them as if it
really is true
. There is no Appeal to Authority amongthe ignorant masses. Instead, the masses determine forthemselves what is true, even if it means that peoplewith little justifiable authority are given seats at thetable to forge the consensus. And why shouldn't theybe heard? After all, each has his or her ownspecial
truthiness
to express, just so long as we allagree with each particular truthiness.What do we call it when the shared opinion of asimple majority or highly vocal minority trumps thefactual knowledge of a small minority of genuineexperts? One name for this is the Appeal to Popularity,a logical fallacy in which the validity of the truth claimis established by reference to its degree of popularityor the size of the population supporting it, rather thanthe facts or even the opinions of genuine experts.The real power of these pseudo-factual
wikialities
is rooted in the fact that they are genuinely, but often
Truthiness
is a catchy termfor what I see as thedomain of impersonal,verifiable truth co-opted,colonized, and controlledby the personal, expressivedomain of sincerity,which is not readilysusceptible to critiqueon purely factual bases.
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