WataugaWatch: "If You Smell Something, Say Something"

Friday, August 07, 2015

"If You Smell Something, Say Something"

The best defense against bullshit is vigilance. Learn to recognize the three types of contemporary bullshit:

1. Making bad things sound like good things.

2. Hiding the bad things under mountains of complexity.

3. The bullshit of infinite possibility: "We can't do anything because we don't yet know everything."

Goodbye, Jon. You improved our sense of smell.

No comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

about

J.W. Williamson was the founding editor in 1972 of the Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, which he edited until July of 2000. He has taught college classes in Appalachian history, cultural politics, and literature, and he has lectured widely on the pop-culture history of "Appalachia" in the American consciousness. His books include Interviewing Appalachia, Southern Mountaineers in Silent Films, and Hillbillyland: What the Mountains Did to the Movies and What the Movies Did to the Mountains. He has won the Thomas Wolfe Award given by the Western North Carolina Historical Society, the Laurel Leaves Award given by the Appalachian Consortium, a special Weatherford Award given by Berea College, and the Cratis Williams-James Brown Award given by the Appalachian Studies Association.
The views expressed on WataugaWatch are solely those of J.W. Williamson or individual contributors and are not necessarily shared nor endorsed by the Watauga County Democratic Party nor by any other adults of sound mind in this or any other universe.