Amusing Ourselves To Death Summary

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Growing up in a simple sports oriented family in a small rural town, I lived by three simple values: work hard to be excellent in what you do, be honest and fair in your interactions with others, and say please and thank you when dealing with the waitstaff at restaurants. I have grown up around sports my entire life with my father and mother coaching baseball and golf respectively and multiple professional athletes in my extended family. So, when I was informed that politics is treated just like another sport I was ecstatic. I became disenchanted quickly. Politics are not sports which is what one would reasonably expect. However, politics is sadly far from an informed discussion about political issues either, which was even more disheartening. …show more content…
To do this, he first starts discussing an often stated though, in his view, incorrect metaphor that politics “is the greatest spectator sport in America” (125). He compares it to the more, in his mind, accurate metaphor that politics “is just like show business” (125). The main distinction that Postman makes between these viewpoints is that if “politics were like a sporting event, there would be several virtues to attach to its name: clarity, honesty, excellence” (126). Meanwhile, if politics is like show business the goal is not to have these virtues but to appear as if you do. This essentially means politicians need not be honest, articulate, and intelligent people, but instead they need to brand themselves as having these qualities. This means politics is just a specialized type of advertising. Hence, in the age of television the medium that shapes our political discourse is the television commercial. As a result, our political discourse is nothing more than soundbites and 30 second clips. There is no and can not be any coherent discourse in politics in the age of television because this is what the medium requires. TALK MORE ABOUT WHAT POSTMAN SAYS THIS MEANS AND HOW I INTERPRET

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