I hereby humbly ask the Federal Communications Commission to lift its unfair ban on the word “bullshit” in the mistaken belief it is profane.
The word has climbed into common everyday conversation and its wildly increasing popularity is reflective of a sign of the times. It seems to be almost universally understood when it is uttered or written.
“We live in an era of unprecedented bullshit production,” observed Laura Penny, author of the “Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit.” I read her book a while back and found it to be witty and instructive.
I understand that a long time ago when the Normans conquered Britain they made new rules insisting that certain words were gutteral and should be banned from oral and written public discourse. Unfortunately, the word for elimination of solid waste was included among those banned from the Queen’s English.
Though there seems to be a universal understanding of what this offensive word is, there is considerable debate about the difference between lies and bullshit.
The dictionary defines bullshit as “deceptive, misleading, disingenuous, unfair or false. As with many expletives, the term can be used as an interjection, or as many other parts of speech, and can carry a wide variety of meanings.”
Wikipedia has said, “Bullshit is commonly used to describe statements made by people more concerned with the response of the audience than in truth and accuracy, such as goal-oriented statements made in the field of politics or advertising.
“On one prominent occasion, the word itself was part of a controversial advertisement. During the 1980 U.S. presidential campaign, the Citizens Party candidate Barry Commoner ran a radio advertisement that began with an actor exclaiming: ‘Bullshit! Carter, Reagan and Anderson, it’s all bullshit!’ NBC refused to run the advertisement because of its use of the expletive, but Commoner’s campaign successfully appealed to the Federal Communications Commission to allow the advertisement to run unedited.”
Philosopher Harry Frankfurt tackled the issue in 1986 in an essay, “On Bullshit,” characterizing it as a form of falsehood distinct from lying. The liar, Frankfurt maintained, knows and cares about the truth, but deliberately sets out to mislead instead of telling the truth. The “bullshitter,” on the other hand, does not care about the truth and is only seeking to impress.”
Therefore, it seems that politicians are much more guilty of spreading bullshit rather than telling lies.
My biggest problem with the process is that it seems most prominent in marketing and advertising, a medium so powerful that it can con us into astonishing self-defeating behavior such as buying bottled water, buying T-shirts that advertise the company by name, turning us into human billboards, and electing political leaders who care not a whit about us working stiffs, but do the bidding of their wealthy corporate masters.
The word is an apt description of the slow-motion coup d’etat over the past 40 years that has fueled the deterioration of our republic.
So the very least we can do collectively is free that that unjustly unlawful word from its unjust prison and let everybody use it to help them understand what is going on the world today.
“When the sky’s falling, I take shelter under bullshit.”
Scott Lynch, Republic of Thieves
Which is why it is helpful to have a good bullshit detector.