Synopsis
Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon—-the addiction to infotainment, from television to the Internet, which has resulted in a lazy and credulous public.
The Barnes & Noble Review
The decline of American civilization has been a favorite subject for writers throughout the last half century. Their screeds usually follow one of two models: the conservative (of which Allan Bloom s The Closing of the American Mind is the most notable example), which blames the mindlessness of modern culture on the '60s, political correctness, and the hijacking of the universities by radical feminists and multiculturalists; and the liberal (with Richard Hofstadter s 1963 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life as prototype), which tends to point a finger at religious fundamentalism, ignorance, racism, and anti-Darwinist school boards. The two sides have always been united, however, in their distrust of television and the electronic media and their belief that these technologies are rendering us ever dumb and dumber. In the words of journalist and social historian Susan Jacoby, "The media, while they may not actually be the message, inevitably reshape content to fit a form that subordinates both the spoken and the written word to visual images"; she expresses a heartfelt disgust for our current way of life, which ensures that we all spend our time "sucking at the video tit from cradle to grave."