Truthiness will not die

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 1/27/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> Larry King also mentioned "truthiness" on his show about Frey, though
> he attributed it to Frank Rich (is Larry King next on Colbert's "Dead to
> Me" list?).

If Larry King hadn't read Frank Rich's Times column on truthiness
(does he read?), he may have gotten the impression that it was Rich's
term from his appearance on "Oprah," after her evisceration of Frey.
(Rich appeared with other columnists such as Richard Cohen, Joel
Stein, and Maureen Dowd-- Oprah kept calling these pundits
"journalists.")

Here's what Rich said about truthiness on "Oprah":

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http://www2.oprah.com/tows/slide/200601/20060126/slide_20060126_350_204.jhtml
Journalists Speak Out

Frank Rich
Oprah: Joining us is Frank Rich, a New York Times columnist who
recently wrote that James Frey reminds us that we live in an age of
"truthiness." What do you mean by…explain that.

Frank Rich: Truthiness is a word, of course, that's been popularized
by Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central.

Oprah: Yeah.

Frank Rich: I mean we live in this word now where this is just sort of
the tip of the iceberg, this memoir, where anyone can sort of put out
something that sort of looks true, smells a little bit like truth but,
in fact, is in some way fictionalized. You look at anything from Enron
fooling people and creating this aura of a great business making huge
profits when it was an empty shell, or people in the government
telling us that mushroom clouds are going to come our way if we don't
invade Iraq for months when it was on faulty and possibly suspect
intelligence. Or even things we label "reality" in entertainment like
reality television. It's cast. It's somewhat scripted. You see Jessica
Simpson and Nick Lachey as happy newlyweds. The reality show is over,
they get divorced and split the profits.
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--Ben Zimmer

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