Warning: Editorial

The LA Times this morning managed to irritate me before I was halfway through my cereal.  The front page of the Calendar section reads:

A HOST OF QUESTIONS
Will Colbert's truthiness survive the "Late Show" switch?

TRUTHINESS?  What are these people playing at?  I looked it up and discovered that it is a word "invented" by comedian Stephen Colbert himself.

I didn't think there would be a definition, but there is and it's this:

Truthiness is a quality assigned to a person claiming an argument is right based on a gut feeling and has nothing to do with logic, evidence or intellectual examination or facts. 

That sounds about right for a politician.

While we're still telling the truth, this is a vastly irritating word and Richie used to use it all the time.  That word is "truism" and is defined as:  A claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be not worth mentioning. 

In my world (and it's a small one) something is true or not true.  Period.  "Oh, it's true because I feel like it is" has no place in thought or rational discussion.  You can say, "I think" or "I feel" but you can't assert something without having proof.