WE ARE JUST BSING YOU

On a recent Sixty Minutes episode, an emeritus professor from Princeton talked about his runaway best seller (every book seems to be a best seller even if you haven't heard of it), called ON BS. He talked about BS in our lives. "Nobody really tells the unadulterated truth," he says.

Few of us take the time to delineate BS from lies--its worth the effort and Professor Frankfurt has spelled it out. The interesting little "read" got its biggest boost from Jon Stewart's, The Daily Show, which fits perfectly with this book as the show is a perfect metaphor for the term BS--A fake-news show that walks the line between social commentary and yes, BS on one hand and comic hyperbole and "over the top exaggeration" on the other? And, what makes The Daily Show so good is that they don't care what the truth really is. Consequently, what they have to say is more truth than fiction as it pokes fun at BS, especially government BS.

Jon Stewart was interviewed on his view and said, simply, "BS is a way of life." The biggest purveyor, of course, and the most important is the government. The most egregious incident of government BS is Iraqnam. It started out as weapons of mass destruction. They weren't found, then it became Iraqi Freedom, and now it is the war on terrorism. According to the good professor, "in there somewhere is some shade of the truth."

The little book is a quick read and worth the time. It will not change your life but just might make you more aware of your own BS and that of others.