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“I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“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?”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“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.”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“A book is an attempt to make through permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. […] The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation. (70)”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration, its symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a chorus girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
L.’s 2024 Year in Books
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