Al Gore on Celebrity Culture
In his best-selling book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore takes a harsh look at the media's fascination with flash over substance and celebrity culture. He discusses how rational, informed decisions on critical issues have become impossible in America, where "the 30-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate's thinking." Here are a few excerpts from the book that talk about how celebrity culture has mesmerized the entire nation.
American democracy is now in danger - not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.
It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know that I am not alone in thinking that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hoped that it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half of the American public believe that Saddam was connected to the attack.
At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just an unfortunate excess - an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time: the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Lacy Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy, Britney and K-Fed, Lindsay and Paris and Nicole.
While American television watchers were collectively devoting 100 million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness. For example, hardly anyone now disagrees that he choice to invade Iraq was a grievous mistake. Yet, incredibly, all of the arguments and evidence necessary to have made the right decision were available at the time and in hindsight are glaringly obvious.
It is too easy - and too partisan - to simply place the blame in President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have free press. Have they failed us?
Today, reason is under assault by forces using more sophisticated techniques: propaganda, psychology, electronic mass media. Yet democracy's advocates are beginning to use their own sophisticated techniques: the internet, online organizing, blogs and wikis. I feel more confident than ever before that democracy will prevail and that the American people are rising to the challenge of reinvigorating self-government.
In his best-selling book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore takes a harsh look at the media's fascination with flash over substance and celebrity culture. He discusses how rational, informed decisions on critical issues have become impossible in America, where "the 30-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate's thinking." Here are a few excerpts from the book that talk about how celebrity culture has mesmerized the entire nation.
American democracy is now in danger - not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know that I am not alone in thinking that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hoped that it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half of the American public believe that Saddam was connected to the attack.
At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just an unfortunate excess - an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time: the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Lacy Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy, Britney and K-Fed, Lindsay and Paris and Nicole.While American television watchers were collectively devoting 100 million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness. For example, hardly anyone now disagrees that he choice to invade Iraq was a grievous mistake. Yet, incredibly, all of the arguments and evidence necessary to have made the right decision were available at the time and in hindsight are glaringly obvious.
It is too easy - and too partisan - to simply place the blame in President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have free press. Have they failed us?
Today, reason is under assault by forces using more sophisticated techniques: propaganda, psychology, electronic mass media. Yet democracy's advocates are beginning to use their own sophisticated techniques: the internet, online organizing, blogs and wikis. I feel more confident than ever before that democracy will prevail and that the American people are rising to the challenge of reinvigorating self-government.
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