Randy's Ruminations

These two words are sign-posts as to how people think. The Associated Press reported that the American Dialect Society chose “truthiness” as the word of the year. Truthiness is a truth that doesn’t have to stand up to the facts. Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, who claims to have coined the phrase, said “You don’t look ‘truthiness’ up in a book, you look it up in your gut.”

A “flexitarian” (the American Dialect Society’s word of the year for 2003) is a vegetarian who eats meat. Come again? A vegetarian who eats meat. That is, someone who believes a vegetarian diet is preferred but either likes meat occasionally or believes people need some meat. So they are flexible on the issue rather than dogmatic.

And so here you have both the up-side and down-side of post-modernism. There is a place for flexibility and being practical rather than dogmatic. Most of us do know in our gut that such is the case, but at times our dogma wouldn’t allow it.

But real truth still matters. Quite paradoxically, Colbert was incensed that the AP article failed to mention him as coining the word “truthiness.” A lexicographer even claims the word already existed. Colbert wanted credit and said of the AP story, “You’re not giving the whole story about tuthiness.” Looks like he wants the facts to count in this case and can’t settle for “truthiness.”