No Stranger to Truth and Bullshit
December 3, 2016 8:13 AM   Subscribe

On NPR Radio (my local NPR station WNYC) this weekend the angst over the #newpresident persists, and, to my mind, has taken a very thoughtful turn. From PBS's This Week In Politics: On Donald Trump and His B.S. (8 min), and from On The Media: How Talking About Trump Makes Him Normal In Your Brain (12 min) with George Lakoff. Seems NPR is having it's own existential crisis...

In the second program, Brook Gladstone asks, "How can we cover the [#newpresident] without covering him?". Berkeley Professor George Lakoff's answer is both linguistic and cognitive (suggesting at one point, if the #newpresident was named "Twimp" nobody would have voted for him).

And in the first program, Quinta Jurecic, a research assistant at the Brookings Institution, introduces her blog readers to a 1986 essay by philosophy professor emeritis Harry Frankfurt republished by Princeton University Press in 2005. Quinta suggests we can understand the #newpresident better by considering Professor Frankfurt's distinction.

But more generally, Quinta's comment seems to underscore the tone of many programs this weekend,"Clearly, we as a culture are having a metaphysical moment.".

I for one promise not to use "Twimps" name but shall here after refer to him as the #newpresident.

Metafilter is no stranger to Professor Frankfurt, previously: (2005); (2011) and highly quoted in Metafilter comments in We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home (11/2015), in Opening lines of philosophy articles (2013)in The Nobelity of the Igs (9/2016),in "I have difficult news" (2012), in After the 2016 US election (11/10/2016). One comment points to another article discussing Professor Frankfurt, Donald Trump Is Not a Liar by Jeet Heer. New Republic (12/1/2015) and two episodes of the Daily Show.
posted by xtian (0 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Heya, sorry, we're still corralling stuff about this into the post-election threads, so bring your links over there. -- LobsterMitten



 

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