The Political Economics of Stephen Colbert
By Daniel O'Connor of Integral Ventures, LLC
Stephen Colbert, brilliant satirist, unrepentant frankenwordsmith, and charismatic host of The Colbert Report, has recently added another neologism to the English language: wikiality. As strange as it may sound, this new concept, together with his previous creation, truthiness, can help us understand what's so wrong with the political economic dialogue in the United States.
Truthiness
According to Wikipedia, "Truthiness is a humorous term coined by Stephen Colbert in reference to the quality by which a person claims to know something intuitively, instinctively, or from the gut without regard to evidence, logic, or intellectual examination. Mr. Colbert created this definition of the word during the first episode (October 17, 2005) of his satirical television program The Colbert Report, as the subject of a segment called The Word."
"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 tool of rhetoric in contemporary socio-political discourse. He particularly applied it to President Bush's modus operandi in nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and in deciding to invade Iraq."
Of course, the only way to appreciate Colbert's satire is to see it for yourself in this Colbert Report video (turning off your browser's pop-up blocker if necessary). As he later told the Associated Press, "you don't look up truthiness in a book, you look it up in your gut." That is, unless you can look it up on Wikipedia, as I did... which brings us to Colbert's second great addition to the English lexicon.
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