He Knows Everything

David Carradine had been dead for four days when this blog appointed its own all-knowing oracle. The character we called Konfuzius—the spelling doing about as much philosophical heavy lifting as you’d expect—would appear in the comments to answer whatever you threw at him: cosmic questions, relationship failures, the theological implications of your ex’s new girlfriend. The timing made his assigned specialty (sex advice, naturally) land with a sharpness that was either very poor taste or very good luck, depending on where you stood.

The oracle format is seductive because it bypasses the one thing real expertise always brings: doubt. An actual expert hedges and qualifies and recommends further reading. An oracle just knows. Carradine spent the better part of a decade doing exactly this on television—the wandering stranger arriving in some dusty American town with ancient Chinese wisdom tucked into his robe, solving your problem without ever raising his voice, and leaving before dinner. Kung Fu probably did more damage to Western ideas about Eastern philosophy than anything short of a fortune cookie factory. The wisdom was portable, universal, gently detached from its origins, and therefore available for any occasion—including, it turned out, dark jokes about Bangkok hotel closets.

The blog oracle didn’t last. They never do. But for a few weeks in June 2009, Konfuzius was in the comments, ready to illuminate.