Amusing Ourselves to Death Read Free Page A

own students are more responsive to Amusing Ourselves to Death, not less, than they were five or ten years ago. “When the book first came out, it was ahead of its time, and some people didn’t understand its reach,” he says. “It’s a twenty-first century book published in the twentieth century.” In 1986, soon after the book was published and had started to make ripples, Dad was on ABC’s Nightline, discussing with Ted Koppel the effect TV can have on society if we let it control us, rather than vice versa. As I recall, at one juncture, to illustrate his point that our brief attention span and our appetite for feel-good content can short-circuit any meaningful discourse, Dad said, “For example, Ted, we’re having an important discussion about the culture but in thirty seconds we’ll have to break for a commercial to sell cars or toothpaste.”
    Mr. Koppel, one of the rare serious figures on network television, smiled wryly—or was it fatigue?
    “Actually, Dr. Postman,” he said, “it’s more like ten seconds.”
    There’s still time.
     
     
    Andrew Postman
Brooklyn, New York
November 2005

In 1985 ...
    If you were alert back then, this refresher may be unnecessary, even laughable. If you were not alert then, this may just be laughable. But it also may help to clarify references in the book about things of that moment. In 1985:
    The United States population is 240 million. The Cold War is still on, though Mikhail Gorbachev has just become the Soviet leader. Ronald Reagan is president. Other major political figures include Walter “Fritz” Mondale, Democratic presidential nominee the year before; Geraldine Ferraro, his vice-presidential running mate; and presidential hopefuls/Senators Gary Hart and John Glenn (the latter a former astronaut). Ed Koch is mayor of New York City. David Garth is a top media consultant for political candidates.
    Top-rated TV shows include Dynasty, Dallas (though it has been several years since the drama of “Who Shot J.R.?” gripped the TV-watching nation), The A-Team, Cheers, and Hill Street Blues. Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings are the nightly network news anchors. The MacNeillLehrer NewsHour is, as The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer years later will be, public television’s respected, low-rated evening news program. Televangelism is enjoying a heyday: leading practitioners include Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Robert Schuller, and Oral Roberts. Howard Cosell has recently retired after many years as TV’s most recognizable sports voice. The show Entertainment Tonight and the cable network MTV, both born a few years earlier, are runaway successes. Two of the most successful TV commercial campaigns are American Express’s series about farflung tourists losing travelers’ checks and Wisk detergent’s spot about “ring around the collar” (about which my father wrote a provocative and funny essay called “The Parable of the Ring Around the Collar”).
    The Mac computer is one year old, USA Today three, People magazine ten. Dr. Ruth Westheimer hosts a popular radio call-in show, offering sex advice with cheer and grandmotherly frankness. African Americans are known as blacks. Martina Navratilova is the world’s best female tennis player. Trivial Pursuit is a top-selling board game. Certain entertainers to whom my father refers—e.g., comedians Shecky Greene, Red Buttons, and Milton Berle, singer Dionne Warwick, TV talk-show host David Susskind—are past their prime, even then.
     
    A.P.

Foreword
    We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
    But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous