Given the choice, people would rather watch flat-out conflict and crosstalk rather than a more plodding format of elevated discourse and sober deliberation… The documentary film Best of Enemies (2015) is not just a compelling chronicle and contextualization of the famous 1968 television debates between William F. Buckley, Jr., and Gore Vidal. As the sequence [...]
As we retreat into our respective corners to enjoy the things we enjoy, we enjoy less and less in common with one another. The bonds that hold us together are loosening… Few things have changed day-to-day American life as much as the free flow of digital entertainment and information from producers to consumers over the [...]
In 2016 Americans are feeling anxious. It’s not that we are experiencing crises—we are neither in total war nor economic depression. Yet 2016 has forced us to rethink all we thought we knew. A Socialist made a credible run for the Democratic nomination and succeeded in moving the Democratic Party platform farther left than it [...]
“There’s Nothing Like a Best Seller to Set Hollywood a-Tingle” —The New York Times Book Review (Sep 16, 1962) “I’d willingly start my next novel—about a small town—right now, but I need the diversion of a play.” —John O’Hara, The New York Times Book Review (Nov 27, 1955) “For most of our lifetime civil war [...]
Recently, I went with a group of friends to a concert of American choral music based on black spirituals. At the intermission, my friends and I spoke excitedly about what we experienced. The sole musician amongst us praised the balance of the ensemble and the conductor’s energy. One woman noticed how nervous the lead soprano [...]
The great English playwright and social philosopher George Bernard Shaw once remarked that all professions are conspiracies against the common folk. He meant that those who belong to elite trades—physicians, lawyers, teachers, and scientists—protect their special status by creating vocabularies that are incomprehensible to the general public. This process prevents outsiders from understanding what the [...]
The average person checks their (sic) phone every six-and-a-half minutes a day. One in four of us admits to spending longer online each day than we do asleep, while 73 percent say that we would struggle to go the whole day without our phones or computers… By the age of seven, the average British child [...]
My habit was this—wake up, make breakfast with my wife, and as she was going to work, I would read the day’s headlines from the “news,” and we would talk about it over the phone. Over recent months, especially the last several days, I felt like I was reading more news, and watching more news, [...]