“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.”
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Neil Postman was a national treasure who was criminally ignored due to all the reasons detailed in ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’. I have read it numerous times myself, as well as giving copies away to people I hoped to influence to stop watching television.
The TV is the greatest mind control device ever conceived, and this bleak postmodern Hell is the fruit TV has spawned.