Truth and Truthiness

One of the themes in The Authenticity Hoax is the significant conceptual overlap between the terms "authentic", "bullshit," and "thruthiness". Still, I wish I had been able to devote more space to making the underlying strucure a bit clearer, because the fact that "authenticity" (as it is used in the Oprah sense of the word") is very much "bullshit" (in the Frankfurtian sense). And that is something that bears deeper analysis. 

Today a reader sent me this essay by Anne Elizabeth Moore, that goes a long way to filling that gap. She begins by suggesting that the fact that authenticity, "one of our most significant driving cultural forces of the last five years can imply both 'truth' and the deliberately falsities that confirm personal belief systems known as 'truthiness' should probably appall."

Just so. What follows is a long but very thoughtful essay, which is interesting throughout.