Pop Goes Philosophy: High-Minded Bullshit
by George Reisch and Gary L. Hardcastle
When Conor Oberst appeared on the Leno show two years ago, he came across as a musician, a foreign policy analyst, a theologian, and a philosopher. Something for nearly everyone. Except George W. Bush, who was at the sharp end of Oberst’s verbal knife. “When the President talks to God,” he sang, “does he ever think that maybe he’s not?” “When he kneels next to the presidential bed, does he ever smell his own bullshit?”
That’s the philosophical part. Ever since Princeton’s eminent philosopher Harry Frankfurt became a celebrated expert on bullshit (with his bestseller titled, appropriately, On Bullshit), this word has found a new, academic respectability. (Watch out for a surge of books by Ivy League authors with four-letter titles, at least in blue state bookstores.) In Frankfurt’s hands, bullshit became an intellectual problem (and not just, as Oberst hinted, a problem for Iraq).
None other than Ludwig Wittgenstein, the towering intellectual godfather of postmodernism and the most celebrated philosopher of the 20th century, gave Frankfurt the anecdote he needed to begin asking what precisely bullshit really is: “I feel like just like a dog that has been run over,” a bed-ridden friend told Wittgenstein when he called to see how she was doing. But in return he could only criticize her. “You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like.” (On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005) When it came to being a nice guy, Wittgenstein was very, very smart. He was famous for calling “nonsense” or bullshit wherever he found it, regardless of the circumstances or other people’s feelings.
You might think that Frankfurt’s success with On Bullshit rested on a kind of discovery—the fact that we use this word so often reveals that there’s a little bit of the famously prickly Austrian philosopher in all of us. (Okay, all of us except for presidents.) But in fact there’s been a parade of philosophers who for centuries have struggled to identify what it is that makes bullshit bullshit and, equally important, why we seem cognitively disposed to produce it, to be mislead by it, or to tolerate it.
-- from “On Bullshitmania” in Bullshit and Philosophy: Guaranteed to Get Perfect Results Every Time (Open Court, 2006)
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MUSIC
K of Analog Giant, one of my favorite daily stops, is moving from Vermont to the Windy City soon, so make sure you welcome him back when he returns to posting. And hey, welcome to the Midwest.
I spent a good five minutes laughing yesterday after my friend Nate posted this video for "This Is Why I'm Hot" from People-Food w/ vocals by Daniel Stessen. Snowsuit!
Horrors Preorder
There's a Horrors pre-order that’s going on until the release of Strange House next Tuesday, May 15. You can pick up the album and a tshirt designed by lead singer Faris Rotter for only $16. Check out the deal here.
Featured Artist: Scissors for Lefty
From their Myspace page:
Hello. We're Scissors For Lefty. Garza's & Krimmel's. We attempt to write songs in order to open or close little chapters of our lives. Documenting little adventures really. Flirting with disaster, reiterating current events, poking fun at love gone wrong. All excuses for us to just hang out. We've shared the stage with greats to us, such as The Arctic Monkeys, Dirty Pretty Things, Panic @ The Disco, Every Move a Picture, The Fiery Furnaces, The 1990's, The Cheat, Lemon Sun, The Situationists, Paul Weller, DJ AM, Grandaddy, Little Wings, The Faraday Effect, Black Heart Procession, Locksley, The Coral, I am Spoon Bender, Pedro The Lion, Inner, Rykarda Parasol, The Wildlife, and many, many more. I dunno, I think we've played about Ninety Nine shows by now, but it's not like we are tight or anything. We would like to bust out 9000 shows, and then, maybe then, we'll fade away...
San Luis Obispo is where we met, and now San Francisco is where we happily reside. Steve Garza, yes another Garza brother, will be cutting a rug with us in 2007. As for Robby, he'll be with us as much as we can steal him away. We all work our asses off, and believe in this band. So, let's share amps, let's share kits. We're broke, and if you are playing with us, you probably are too. Here's to always being hungry...
Scissors for Lefty - "Next to Argyle"