If Politics Is Like Show Business, Then

The Reader Must Come Armed , In A Serious State Of Intellectual Readiness. This Is Not Easy Because He Comes To The Text Alone. In Reading, One's Responses Are Isolated, One'sintellect Thrown Back On Its Own Resourses. To Be Confronted By The Cold Abstractions Of Printed Sentences Is To Look Upon Language Bare, Without The Assistance Of Either Beauty Or Community. Thus, Reading Is By Its Nature A Serious Business. It Is Also, Of Course, An Essentially Rational Activity.

Everything In Our Background Has Prepared Us To Know And Resist A Prison When The Gates Begin To Close Around Us . . . But What If There Are No Cries Of Anguish To Be Heard? Who Is Prepared To Take Arms Against A Sea Of Amusements? To Whom Do We Complain, And When, And In What Tone Of Voice, When Serious Discourse Dissolves Into Giggles? What Is The Antidote To A Culture's Being Drained By Laughter?

Watching Television Requires No Skills And Develops No Skills. That Is Why There Is No Such Thing As Remedial Television-watching.

We Do Not Measure A Culture By Its Output Of Undisguised Trivialities But By What It Claims As Significant.

Television Is Altering The Meaning Of 'being Informed' By Creating A Species Of Information That Might Properly Be Called Disinformation. Disinformation Does Not Mean False Information. It Means Misleading Information - Misplaced, Irrelevant, Fragmented Or Superficial Information - Information That Creates The Illusion Of Knowing Something, But Which In Fact Leads One Away From Knowing.