you can't handle the truthiness

"'Truthiness' Is Named the Word of the Year" (Fri Dec 8, 5:04 PM ET)

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - After 12 months of naked partisanship on Capitol Hill, on cable TV and in the blogosphere, the word of the year for 2006 is ... "truthiness."

The word — if one can call it that — best summed up 2006, according to an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster.

"Truthiness" was credited to Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

"We're at a point where what constitutes truth is a question on a lot of people's minds, and truth has become up for grabs," said Merriam-Webster president John Morse. "`Truthiness' is a playful way for us to think about a very important issue."

Colbert, who once derided the folks at Springfield-based Merriam-Webster as the "word police" and a bunch of "wordinistas," was pleased.

"Though I'm no fan of reference books and their fact-based agendas, I am a fan of anyone who chooses to honor me," he said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
by ADAM GORLICK, Associated Press Writer

Article Annotation: part of me wants to pretend this is simply make believe, but its all to real. for instance, Colbert's derision for institutionalized litergical hierarchy is simply a reflection of his dim whit. paradoxically, the medium for all his puns, punch lines, and saturnine perspectives, is the same thing of which he derides; that is they stucture of language. there is a "begging the question" in the previous sentense, but it isn't a logical falacy, because language can't exisist without general rules, and Colbert expressed that he generally disagrees with the ruler of language, namely dictionaries vis a vis definitions. but one thing is for certain; he is a perfect American, who detests whatever the transcendant standard is, in favor of himself. now I'm a huge fan of silly expressions and homeade terms, but not at the expense of definitiary claritarity. my question is if supercillious comedians like this are let loose on language, even to damaging the understanding of truth, how should an intellectual respond. step back fromt the audience for a moment and consider the ineffable value of truth. "when the foundations are being destroyed, what are the righteous doing?" (Psalm 11:3 NIV)