The Johnny Denovo Mysteries

A news story today brought to mind the conceptual metaphor of near-far. The headline of the story captures it perfectly: “Paterson’s Office Says SNL Went Too Far.”

Using a distance metaphor is interesting when it comes to parodies or mockery, but when you consider that truth is an approximation (“close to the truth”) and that veracity is similar (“the heart of the matter”), turning this around so that steps tangential to the truth are about going “far” makes sense.

In fact, you “stray from” the truth in the same way you stray from a path, another indication that truth is about proximity.

Did Saturday Night Live go too far? Probably. But the fact that it was a distance they went instead of a temperature, a height, or a color demonstrates that taste, as well as truth, is about proximity — being at the right place at the right time.