Nothing Is Real: When Reality TV Programming Masquerades as Politics
Tue, 2017-01-17 20:54
News Staff
By John W. Whitehead
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”— Professor Neil Postman
Donald Trump no longer needs to launch Trump TV. He’s already the star of his own political reality show. Americans have a voracious appetite for TV entertainment, and the Trump reality show—guest starring outraged Democrats with a newly awakened conscience for immigrants and the poor, power-hungry Republicans eager to take advantage of their return to power, and a hodgepodge of other special interest groups with dubious motives—feeds that appetite for titillating, soap opera drama.
Read the entire story on the e-Edition of our newspaper. http://www.etypeservices.com/Advance%20News%20JournalID455/