What is Truth?

I think I’m totally getting the hang of how to talk like a conservative. 

Take a look at Martin Kennedy–“it would be better if parents had the option between mixed gender or single gender.  That is self-evident.”–and that cutie Bill Hobbs–“The truth is, Ms. Trunk, that there IS truth and if your ‘truth’ isn’t actually true then it is fiction, no matter how badly you want to believe it.”

See?

I can totally do this.  You just pick something that is actually up for debate and pass it off as unquestioned truth in order to further your position on something else that is also up for debate.

Okay, let’s try it:

First something up for debate passed off as truth: “Because everybody benefits when Aunt B. is happy”.

And then using my “truth” to further my own agenda: “conservatives should argue less with her and buy her more flowers.”

Woo.  That is fun.

And, seriously, wouldn’t things just be much easier if the conservatives just went along with whatever I said?

I am tickled by Bill Hobbs, though.  It’s not just because I adore performative contradictions, but also because I’m pretty sure that he’s so outraged by Penelope Trunk that he doesn’t see that he’s enacting a performative contradiction.

Let’s enjoy.

Hobb’s position is that there is an objective truth, that one can look at a situation and, with enough information and work, one can come to the TRUTH of a matter (and in all fairness, this is tempting to me, as well) and yet, he reads Trunk, who is arguing that everybody’s take on something is colored by their own perspective, and interprets what she says as saying that “journalists are supposed to misquote people.”

Oh, the funny.