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earlier but also has a long track record of dedicated public service.
    10 . Harry G. Frankfurt, in
On Bullshit
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), plausibly shows how the term “bullshit” has rich descriptive content, even as it initially appears as a term of abuse. The same may be true of “chickenshit” and “horseshit,” which differ from each other and from “bullshit” in descriptive meaning. Our inquiry lies within this distinguished line of research. We hope our theory prompts one to think, “Hey, I’ve met that guy,” and thus provides demonstrative evidence that there is at least one asshole and probably more. One could so embrace the existence of assholes even if one had quibbles about the theory’s details.
    11 . Someone actually spoke (roughly) the stated sentence to me spontaneously in conversation. That isn’t decisive evidence that it can be
true or false
to say that someone is an asshole, and not simply a way of expressing one’s feelings of disapproval (as in saying “boo!” to the opposing sports team or in using harsh terms such as “shithead” or “cocksucker,” which invoke an unflattering descriptive image without making any claim to truth, properly speaking). Further evidence would be a conditional sentence such as “If an asshole cuts you off in traffic, then it is appropriate to lay on the horn.” Here the term “asshole” does not plainly reflect either approval or disapproval. Still better evidence is a sentence that expresses
thoroughgoing endorsement
, such as “Yes, I am an asshole, and proud of it,” perhaps said in all sincerity by a supreme asshole who is taunting his subjects with this pronouncement. See
The Onion
’s headline “Asshole Admits to Being Asshole in Supreme Asshole Move,” May 19, 2004, www.​theonion.​com/​articles/​asshole-​admits-​to-​being-​asshole-​in-​supreme-​asshole,​1172/ . We can add that taking asshole discourse to aim at stating truths doesn’t mean that we do not
also
use it to swear and express disapproval, as in “Gosh,
what
an asshole!” or “That guy is
such
an asshole!” When a speaker calls someone an asshole, this can be seen to
pragmatically indicate
that he or she disapproves. For this view of moral judgment, see David Copp, “Realist-Expressivism: A Neglected Option for Moral Realism,”
Social Philosophy and Policy
18, no. 2 (2001): 1–43; and Stephen Finlay, “Value and Implicature,”
Philosophers’ Imprint
5, no. 4 (July 2005): 1–20, http://​hdl.​handle.​net/​2027/​spo.​3521354.​0005.​004 .
    12 . Eric Melech, www.​urban​dictionary.​com/​define.​php?​term=​asshole .
    13 . One entry in the Urban Dictionary describes the asshole as “a man who could tempt the Pope into a fight” (Bwillis, www.​urban​dicti​onary.​com/​define.​php?​term=​asshole&page=4 ). It is apparently true across cultures that the most common source of homicide is “altercations of relatively trivial origin” that often have to do with small slights. See Martin Daly and Margo Wilson,
Homicide
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1988), 125.
    14 . Here I point to a common feeling without denying that many people have a quite different attitude in light of special intimate or recreational purposes. For the general ambivalent or hostile feelings about such matters, see Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?,” in
Is the Rectum a Grave?: and Other Essays
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
    15 . David Foster Wallace, “Certainly the End of
Something
or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think (Re John Updike’s
Toward the End of Time
),” in
Consider the Lobster
(New York: Little, Brown, 2006). Originally published as “John Updike, Champion Literary Phallocrat, Drops One; Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?,”
New York Observer
, October 13, 1997,