Notes On Amusing Ourselves To Death

For one thing, as I have said, the printed word had a monopoly on both attention and intellect, there being no other means, besides the oral tradition, to have access to public knowledge. Public figures were known largely by their written words, for example, not by their looks or even their oratory.

The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether.

The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.