The Sound Bite Society: Television and the American Mind

Rating:
Summary: Guilt Tripping The American People Is The Only Real Answer
Review: It has been around eleven months since I wrote my Amazon community review of James Fallows', "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy." Regrettably, Jeffrey Scheuer shares Fallow's main fault: both men are reluctant in placing the primary blame squarely upon the shoulders of those mostly responsible for the deficiencies of the media---the American people. Scheuer and Fallows, at least tacitly, embrace the egalitarian notion that the vast majority of our fellow citizens must be perceived only as "victims." Conveniently overlooked is the cold fact that pertinent information and ideas of value are often relatively inexpensive, if not outright free. Most Americans are ignorant only because of outright laziness and indifference. The two authors have slipped into the bad habit of merely preaching to the choir. The people currently willing to pay attention to their observations are not those who need to be taken to task.

Am I saying that the typical American should be obsessed about politics? On the contrary, it would be a very unhealthy state of affairs if most people focussed exclusively upon the political issues of the day. I recall the story concerning a European visiting the United States during the Nixon Watergate crisis. This individual was flabbergasted when visiting a local bar to see that the patrons were watching a sports contest on TV, and nobody was apparently concerned about the upheaval taking place in Washington, D.C. Many other countries throughout the world would have experienced bloodshed in the streets. The laudable strength of our political system is that up to a point, most of us can ignore politics, and instead concentrate on other aspects of our everyday lives. A problem occurs, however, when few citizens invest sufficient time and energy in fulfilling their minimal intellectual duties. For the sake of the argument, I will concede every point that Jeffrey Scheuer makes in this book. A society easily seduced by sound bites is indeed flirting with danger. Watching too much TV, a very passive medium, probably does result in the deterioration of one's ability to think and follow a logical argument. Corporate domination of our sundry forms of mainstream media disturbs me to no end. Nevertheless, we live in the greatest nation ever conceived in human history. Is somebody pointing a gun at the heads of those who almost exclusively view professional wrestling and the freak show hosted by Jerry Springer? Isn't PBS available for free on standard TV? Aren't most of us able to visit a local library? Both Fallows and Scheuer deserve to have an audience for their valuable writings. I strongly recommend we take their sometimes debatable insights seriously. They have earned the right to a hearing and have much to share. Regretfully, though, I must proverbially slap them upside the head and point out that little good will be accomplished unless they are willing to guilt trip the majority of their fellow citizens.

Rating:
Summary: Guilt Tripping The American People Is The Only Real Answer
Review: It has been around eleven months since I wrote my Amazon community review of James Fallows', "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy." Regrettably, Jeffrey Scheuer shares Fallow's main fault: both men are reluctant in placing the primary blame squarely upon the shoulders of those mostly responsible for the deficiencies of the media---the American people. Scheuer and Fallows, at least tacitly, embrace the egalitarian notion that the vast majority of our fellow citizens must be perceived only as "victims." Conveniently overlooked is the cold fact that pertinent information and ideas of value are often relatively inexpensive, if not outright free. Most Americans are ignorant only because of outright laziness and indifference. The two authors have slipped into the bad habit of merely preaching to the choir. The people currently willing to pay attention to their observations are not those who need to be taken to task.

Am I saying that the typical American should be obsessed about politics? On the contrary, it would be a very unhealthy state of affairs if most people focussed exclusively upon the political issues of the day. I recall the story concerning a European visiting the United States during the Nixon Watergate crisis. This individual was flabbergasted when visiting a local bar to see that the patrons were watching a sports contest on TV, and nobody was apparently concerned about the upheaval taking place in Washington, D.C. Many other countries throughout the world would have experienced bloodshed in the streets. The laudable strength of our political system is that up to a point, most of us can ignore politics, and instead concentrate on other aspects of our everyday lives. A problem occurs, however, when few citizens invest sufficient time and energy in fulfilling their minimal intellectual duties. For the sake of the argument, I will concede every point that Jeffrey Scheuer makes in this book. A society easily seduced by sound bites is indeed flirting with danger. Watching too much TV, a very passive medium, probably does result in the deterioration of one's ability to think and follow a logical argument. Corporate domination of our sundry forms of mainstream media disturbs me to no end. Nevertheless, we live in the greatest nation ever conceived in human history. Is somebody pointing a gun at the heads of those who almost exclusively view professional wrestling and the freak show hosted by Jerry Springer? Isn't PBS available for free on standard TV? Aren't most of us able to visit a local library? Both Fallows and Scheuer deserve to have an audience for their valuable writings. I strongly recommend we take their sometimes debatable insights seriously. They have earned the right to a hearing and have much to share. Regretfully, though, I must proverbially slap them upside the head and point out that little good will be accomplished unless they are willing to guilt trip the majority of their fellow citizens.

Rating:
Summary: A verbose, difficult read with a very complex argument.
Review: Note: The original title of this book is "The Sound Bite Society: How Television Helps the Right and Hurts the Left".

If you drag your eyes through this read, keep a dictionary handy, as the author attemps to impress with lots and lots of obscure, big words. However, he makes a strong point, but his lack of passion shows. It reads like legaleese. Yes, it's a good book, but I can't recomend actually reading it unless you have a strong interest in the subject.

To sum up his points:

Television, as a media form, is inherently limited to oversimplification, polorization, and sensationalism.

Liberal ideology is complex and conservative ideology is much simpler.

Therefore, television, as a medium, is better suited to explain the simpler, "good/bad", "right/wrong" conservative viewpoints than the liberal counter-arguements because of it's inherent inability to properly communicate complexity.

I agree with many of his conclusions. I think that he's really nailed a good argument for a "conservative" media.

One good thing about this book is it's treatment of the conservative side, saying that conservatives should be proud of their simplicity, and giving a pretty honest and fair dipictment of conservativism. Not that conservatives will like this book, however. It's much too complex. In fact, if you read this, then read "Bias", by Bernard Goldberg, you'll see a large difference in the amount of complexity in the arguments.

To sum up the book in one sentance:
Conservatives have all the good sound bites.

Rating:
Summary: A verbose, difficult read with a very complex argument.
Review: Note: The original title of this book is "The Sound Bite Society: How Television Helps the Right and Hurts the Left".

If you drag your eyes through this read, keep a dictionary handy, as the author attemps to impress with lots and lots of obscure, big words. However, he makes a strong point, but his lack of passion shows. It reads like legaleese. Yes, it's a good book, but I can't recomend actually reading it unless you have a strong interest in the subject.

To sum up his points:

Television, as a media form, is inherently limited to oversimplification, polorization, and sensationalism.

Liberal ideology is complex and conservative ideology is much simpler.

Therefore, television, as a medium, is better suited to explain the simpler, "good/bad", "right/wrong" conservative viewpoints than the liberal counter-arguements because of it's inherent inability to properly communicate complexity.

I agree with many of his conclusions. I think that he's really nailed a good argument for a "conservative" media.

One good thing about this book is it's treatment of the conservative side, saying that conservatives should be proud of their simplicity, and giving a pretty honest and fair dipictment of conservativism. Not that conservatives will like this book, however. It's much too complex. In fact, if you read this, then read "Bias", by Bernard Goldberg, you'll see a large difference in the amount of complexity in the arguments.

To sum up the book in one sentance:
Conservatives have all the good sound bites.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent analysis
Review: Scheuer's book is a gem, a worthy companion to Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television and Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. His taxonomy of how television mediates reality -- especially political reality -- is informed and thorough and should become the locus classicus on the subject. And his reflections on how the structure of television reality undercuts an open and organic view of society deserve a wide audience. To boot, the writing is clear, witty, evenhanded -- a good read.

Rating:
Summary: popularized media deconstruction analysis -- boring!
Review: The text is 192 pages followed by 32 pages of footnotes and a six page bibliography. The table of contents does not include subchapter headings and there is no index at all.

Here's how the book begins (page 1):

"Two great trends, among and perhaps above the others, have shaped American politics over the past generation. Their relationship, if recognized at all, is seldom clearly understood. One has been the emergence of television, not just as an important element in the political process, but as its very framework. The other is the nearly complete collapse of American liberalism in the face of a resurgent New Right, beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and continuing with the Republican takeover in the congressional elections of 1994 and subsequent conservative gains. These trends are connected, and the shaping of information by television affects the organization of political beliefs."

OK. But a third causal factor immediately comes to mind. One waits a long time for Scheuer to figure out what it is. But in the meantime you find yourself subjected to such as the following (page 91-92):

"In addition to the language of television--the characteristic channels and vocabulary of its information stream--there is another, related level at which TV mediates human awareness. This is what we might call its phenomenology: how that objective stream of messages interacts with subjective viewers to shape our overall sense of reality, as compare to, say, reading, holding a conversation, or witnessing a live event. Here again, the relationship of form to content, or medium to message, is central.... And while the message may also reciprocally influence the language, it does not shape the technology itself. At least in a narrow sense, that technology is a given, a cultural artifact that precedes the messages."

The book largely consists of observations that are inane, such as "A television is not a book..." (page 70), or "We can agree that murder, assault, rape, theft, fraud, and slavery are unacceptable breaches of moral order." (page 158) or "Government waste, bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption, and pork barrel politics are certainly important journalistic targets." (page 45) or observations that are completely incoherent, such as:

"`Judgment,' notes the psychoanalyst Donald M. Kaplan, `begins with the recognition that personal appetites are not continuous with the supplies that gratify them. There is an inside (appetite) and an outside (milk), and these are separate realms. Cognition is built upon the ontogenetics of subject/object split, which begins with psychological separation from the mother and an appreciation of the mother as a person in her own right.' Television, Kaplan argues, represents a `morbid regression' to the infantile preseparation state that `requires so little judgment and interpretation that it never raises the question of whether it is inside or outside, whether the eye or ear is a distinct sense organ or simply a variant of the mouth; for this reason, experience with the medium must be placed at the primitive level.' In short, it defeats or obscures relationships on all levels--intellectual, interpersonal, and cognitive."

What, you might ask, is Scheuer driving at? Well, he contends that conservatism is "simple" and liberalism is "complex" and television as a medium is primarily conducive to the conveyance of things that are simple and therefore favors conservatism. Unfortunately, early in the book he offers a counterexample that renders his thesis bunk: "Of course, not all of the messages or effects of television are conservative; it is at least a curiosity that the most rebellious and original generation in American history was also the first to grow up ... on a steady diet of TV." Only on page 186 of the book, near the very end, does he finally comment on what's really going on: "But arguably the worst [Supreme Court] decision ... established campaign spending as a form or freedom of speech." No kidding: money in politics, the causal variable.

Rating:
Summary: popularized media deconstruction analysis -- boring!
Review: The text is 192 pages followed by 32 pages of footnotes and a six page bibliography. The table of contents does not include subchapter headings and there is no index at all.

Here's how the book begins (page 1):

"Two great trends, among and perhaps above the others, have shaped American politics over the past generation. Their relationship, if recognized at all, is seldom clearly understood. One has been the emergence of television, not just as an important element in the political process, but as its very framework. The other is the nearly complete collapse of American liberalism in the face of a resurgent New Right, beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and continuing with the Republican takeover in the congressional elections of 1994 and subsequent conservative gains. These trends are connected, and the shaping of information by television affects the organization of political beliefs."

OK. But a third causal factor immediately comes to mind. One waits a long time for Scheuer to figure out what it is. But in the meantime you find yourself subjected to such as the following (page 91-92):

"In addition to the language of television--the characteristic channels and vocabulary of its information stream--there is another, related level at which TV mediates human awareness. This is what we might call its phenomenology: how that objective stream of messages interacts with subjective viewers to shape our overall sense of reality, as compare to, say, reading, holding a conversation, or witnessing a live event. Here again, the relationship of form to content, or medium to message, is central.... And while the message may also reciprocally influence the language, it does not shape the technology itself. At least in a narrow sense, that technology is a given, a cultural artifact that precedes the messages."

The book largely consists of observations that are inane, such as "A television is not a book..." (page 70), or "We can agree that murder, assault, rape, theft, fraud, and slavery are unacceptable breaches of moral order." (page 158) or "Government waste, bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption, and pork barrel politics are certainly important journalistic targets." (page 45) or observations that are completely incoherent, such as:

"`Judgment,' notes the psychoanalyst Donald M. Kaplan, `begins with the recognition that personal appetites are not continuous with the supplies that gratify them. There is an inside (appetite) and an outside (milk), and these are separate realms. Cognition is built upon the ontogenetics of subject/object split, which begins with psychological separation from the mother and an appreciation of the mother as a person in her own right.' Television, Kaplan argues, represents a `morbid regression' to the infantile preseparation state that `requires so little judgment and interpretation that it never raises the question of whether it is inside or outside, whether the eye or ear is a distinct sense organ or simply a variant of the mouth; for this reason, experience with the medium must be placed at the primitive level.' In short, it defeats or obscures relationships on all levels--intellectual, interpersonal, and cognitive."

What, you might ask, is Scheuer driving at? Well, he contends that conservatism is "simple" and liberalism is "complex" and television as a medium is primarily conducive to the conveyance of things that are simple and therefore favors conservatism. Unfortunately, early in the book he offers a counterexample that renders his thesis bunk: "Of course, not all of the messages or effects of television are conservative; it is at least a curiosity that the most rebellious and original generation in American history was also the first to grow up ... on a steady diet of TV." Only on page 186 of the book, near the very end, does he finally comment on what's really going on: "But arguably the worst [Supreme Court] decision ... established campaign spending as a form or freedom of speech." No kidding: money in politics, the causal variable.