There was a day not far distant, you know, just before World War II, when nearly all of us news people, although perhaps white collar by profession, earned blue-collar salaries. We were part of the “common people.” We suffered the same budgetary restraints, the same bureaucratic indignities, waited in the same lines, suffered the same […]
Books, Arts and Culture
Read reviews and commentary on books, movies, video, tv, radio, podcasts, streaming, documentary, media, religion, history, sports, arts and entertainment, social media, Hollywood
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State of the Debate: The Sale of a Generation
Generation X is a hot marketing concept, used as a hook to sell everything from condoms to cars. Can right-wingers use it to sell their ideas?
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Incredible News
The rise of infotainment and tabloid TV news reflects popular acceptance of the summons to turn news into play — which people are willing to do when they have given up on public life.
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Diary of the American Nightmare
T he Book of Revelations does not say whether the apocalypse will be televised. But if it is, WSVN in Miami will not have to interrupt its regular programming. It’s July 18 — the day of a visit by President Clinton to Miami — and WSVN, the nation’s most notorious tabloid station, is leading its […]
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The Disengaged
David Hackett Fischer’s new book, Paul Revere’s Ride, is a cautionary tale for Democrats who expect their heroes to produce results overnight. The story of Paul Revere has come down to us as a tale of individual daring. In our national memory, he rides through the night single-handedly spreading the alarm about the redcoats to […]
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Imagesbusters, the Sequel
Can’t we fight televised mayhem and the real thing too?
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Only Connect
The New York Times Book (sic) Review for March 6, 1994 ran a feature piece reviewing a CD-ROM. “Microsoft Art Gallery,” an interactive digitized catalog of Britain’s National Gallery collection, won a rave. Just point and click, and you can pull up paintings by artist, period, or genre; you can also get spoken critical commentaries […]
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Citizen Keynes
Skidelsky’s dazzling biography gets Keynes the man just right, and his economics somewhat wrong.
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Imagebusters
Revulsion against television violence offers cheap indignation. Unfortunately, imagebusting does little about the deeper sources of our violent society.
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Hispanic USA
We are witnessing the Hispanization of the United States, not the Americanization of Hispanics.