The Times of Bullshit..

Over the last few days, my window to the world has been the Times of India. Kinda like life was, when I was a few years older than Annika. That's how it used to be. Regardless of what the 9 pm news said, life was what was written in the TOI. The rules of the English language were based on what was written in the TOI

But that was then. This is now.

Now is when winners of the "prestigious" TOI Social Impact Award get considered for the Padma awards, no matter that the award is in its inaugural year.

Now is when the Times Insight group, writes 10th standard essays on the petrol price in India being the 3rd highest by purchasing power parity, that grace the front page of the Sunday edition, while comparing the prices of gasoline in India today, with those in January 2011 for the rest of the world..

Now is when the Times of India leads a so-called ACT - Against Corruption Together to support the Anna Hazare campaign, but conveniently leaves out any mention of any dissenting voice.. (Could it have something to do with this development, I wonder.. but that's for another day.. )

Now is when the Times sells its masthead and its front page to anyone and everyone who will pay them top dollar.

Now is also when the Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd. Wikipedia page, reads the following disclaimer:

This article is written like an advertisement. Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view.

Now is when, accused of  found guilty of misleading readers through paid articles that look like actual articles through Medianet and Private Treaties, the CEO of BCCL has this to say:

Even if you make an advertisement, and put a circle around it, how is that important? Why is it important that it should be made clear to the reader?

At this point, does it matter what the TOI prints on a daily basis? Maybe they could just print receipts for their patrons in their daily tripe..

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Harry G. Frankfurt

- On Bullshit..