Truthiness and the art of Stephen Colbert

Last week Stephen Colbert reported in his "Who's Honoring Me Now?"(August 9, 2012) segment of the Colbert Report that a study reported in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review verified his concept of  "truthiness."  The researchers, scientists from Canada and New Zealand, said about their work:

"We wanted to examine how the kinds of photos people see every day — the ones that decorate newspaper or TV headlines, for example — might produce ‘truthiness,’” the lead researcher, Eryn J. Newman of Victoria University of Wellington, explained. “We were really surprised by what we found."

You can read about their project and findings in the article -- Cognitive researchers find truth in Colbert’s ‘truthiness’ -- by Eric W. Dolan at the Raw Story.

Stephen Colbert

Political satirist Stephen Colbert can sometimes be hard to watch -- he does his satire very well.  Truthiness was the subject of a segment called "The Word," presented during the pilot episode of his weekly program.  You can view that episode on his site Colbert Nation.
Since that initial broadcast the word "truthiness" has gained a foothold in the English language:

Merriam-Webster's #1 Word of the Year for 2006:

1. truthiness (noun)
1 : "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005)

2 : "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect Society, January 2006)

And it has been analyzed in the NY Times by Ben Zimmer in his column "On Language."

Not bad for an improv comedian from South Carolina.

-- Marge