Friday, October 26, 2012

Obama: Romney's a Bullshitter

Oops. The president accidentally said what everybody already knows...or maybe not so accidentally...

I do not want the race shaken up. I want it to stay exactly where it is. So, tactically speaking, I'm not wild about this. But, speaking as a human being: good show, Mr. President.

It's a little less raw than "liar," but much more direct than references to Romnesia.

It might (or might not) be worth noting that, according to Frankfurt in "On Bullshit" (or: On Bullshit, now that it's been made into a little book and somehow managed to break out of the insular world of academic philosophy) the liar cares about truth and falsehood because he wants to get you to believe that something false is true, whereas the bullshitter just doesn't care much about whether what he says is true. Frankfort's line on this is interesting, but I've never been convinced that it's quite right...not that I'm going to spend lots of time thinking about it. Romney's probably more liar than bullshitter on that way of slicing things up, but the case might be complicated.

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