Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Neil Postman, the author of the 1980s classic Amusing Ourselves to Death, wrote, “Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities, and commercials.”

On the simplest level, television prioritizes visual images and the spoken word over written text, as Neil Postman argued in the influential book Amusing Ourselves to Death, written during the heyday of the TV era.