May 15, 2005
Ivy League Prof Sifts Through BS
Morley Safer Talks To Scholars Studying The Subject Of Bull
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Play CBS Video Video Professor Studies BS Correspondent Morley Safer talks to professors who are studying BS.
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The success of philosopher Harry Frankfurt's book on BS suggests that he's touched a nerve in the American psyche. (CBS)
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Frankfurt joined the great American BS celebrity parade for his first live TV interview about the subject, on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show." (CBS)
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Laura Penny has written a book titled, "Your Call Is Important To Us: The Truth About BS." (CBS)
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Special Report In Print Find out more about the latest books and what best-selling authors are working on.
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Who's buying the book?
"I don't know. I think that there’s a lot of impulse purchase," says Walter Lippincott. "When you go into a store and you see a little book that says 'On Bulls---' and you say, 'I just know who I’d like to give this to.' And I would expect that not everybody that buys it, reads it."
"It’s fairly dense," says Safer.
"It's a serious bit of philosophy," says Lippincott.
Frankfurt is the Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, where he walks the same paths on campus that Einstein once trod. He now shares the philosophical landscape with other best sellers like Jane Fonda and Jack Welch.
"Were you ever tempted to use … a more elegant title?" asks Safer.
"What could be more elegant?" says Frankfurt.
"And there isn’t a decent euphemism for it, is there?" asks Safer.
"I don’t think so," says Frankfurt. "There are a lot of comparable words like humbug and balderdash and that sort of thing. But they lack the same pungent rhetorical force that bull---- has."
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