Ivy League Prof Sifts Through BS

Morley Safer Talks To Scholars Studying The Subject Of Bull

(CBS) 
"If there’s so much more mass communication going on, one would assume there is a corresponding increase in BS," says Safer.

"I think that’s probably true," says Frankfurt. "Any time you put people in the position where they are obliged, or feel obliged to talk about things that they don’t really know very much about, you’re bound to get a lot of bull----. And that happens very frequently in our culture."

A great provider of BS is drive-time radio. But your very own cell phone can send and receive as much as Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh. And since one person’s BS can be another’s gospel truth, defining it is tricky.

In Frankfurt's book, he makes a very clear distinction between lying and BS. "I think the distinction is that the liar believes that he knows the truth and is concerned to substitute for the truth something that he himself believes to be false," says Frankfurt.

But the "BS-er," like the classic Jon Lovitz character on "Saturday Night Live," doesn't really care if something’s true or false. All that matters is closing the deal.

"It's a more insidious threat to the truth than lying is. Because the liar, after all, recognizes the difference between true and false," says Frankfurt. "And he’s concerned about that difference. The bullsh---er is just not interested in that. That’s not his program. He’s interested in selling his product or whatever that is."

Frankfurt’s book comes from the Princeton University Press, which routinely puts out such snoozers as “Kierkegaard’s Concept of Despair,” the kind of title that usually sells in the high three digits. “On BS” has sold an unheard of 175,000 copies, and publisher Walter Lippincott says that’s no BS.