This contrast between the interactive content that “people crave” and the “traditional media” that has become outmoded has taken on a political cast since the election. In a New Yorker item, Joshua Rothman argues that “Democrats preach while Republicans riff” — i.e. Democrats operate like the nattering nabobs of traditional media while Republicans

The thing we call culture is always an aggregation of individual human behaviors, and if taste were the mere product of random idiosyncrasies and irrational psychologies, culture would display no patterns, only noise. The fact that preferences in these disparate fields follow a similar rhythm of change suggests there must be universal principles of

This, he concludes, is the essence of politics: the ability to reflect consciously on different directions one’s society could take, and to make explicit arguments why it should take one path rather than another.