Triumph of the Airheads
A very readable new book is Shelley Gare's Triumph of the Airheads. It's very angry about lots of things, from dumbed-down postmodern education to businesses in the grip of their Human Resources departments. From our point of view the interesting chapter is the one on mindless spending on "lifestyle". Unlike some complainants about this sort of thing, Gare knows exactly what she is talking about - for years she was editor of newspaper "lifestyle supplements".
posted by Jim at 9:30 PM
1 Comments:
Oh that looks really interesting.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the role of the media as an unacknowledged malignant force waging a war of distraction on ordinary people from what is really important. And it's noticeably 'progressing' - the baseline of puerility, gossipy maliciousness, gratuitous sexuality and running of freak-shows has shifted noticeably even in the last 15 years, it seems to me.
I started thinking about this after listening to a podcasted episode of John Safran and Father Bob (JJJ radio). They were tossing arund Jewish vs. Christian vs. Muslim conceptions of Satan. FB said as he understood the Muslim conception, it was not so much Hollywood "pure evil" (the bad guy in the James Bond movie etc) as "the great trivialiser", and that is one of the big issues they have with the West. And I thought - you know what, that makes a lot of sense.
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