There was also one bit where Homer and Marge were inviting the baby to “come to the one you love the most” and she crawled towards the TV. And wasn’t there one where Lisa said something disparaging about the “tube” and Homer said haughtily: “I’ll pretend you never said that!”?
"Lying in politics became far more normalised as attention-spans shortened the news cycle." - When Elizabeth Warren was revealed to have been fibbing about being an American Indian, and admitted to having done it for her academic / professional advancement, I assumed that was the end of her political career. I mean, so many political thrillers revolve around powerful people trying to stop an embarrassing secret from getting out. Instead, the public mostly shrugged and kept scrolling.
I love the Jeremy Brett Holmes, easily the best Holmes ever, and it's because the actors were genuinely able to get into the skins of the 19th century to be actual people from the 19th century rather than modern actors in costumes. All the other Holmes films of the 21st century, no one would ever mistake him for a Victorian gentleman (and the less said about the dreadful recent series with a young Holmes if because it showed his mother with her long hair down in public). But watching Jeremy Brett, you really believed this is a Victorian man from Victorian England and of a certain class and attitudes and mindset. Genuine brilliance in acting and one that is impossible to find these days because all actors are too afraid to be true. And that is the problem, in our declining literacy, we are losing the quest for truth.
I'm only 46 but I remember when it was perfectly normal to find entire bookcases of newly published books from new authors and a 100,000 word count would be perfectly normal. And that was only 20 years ago (ok, 25 years ago). Now it's a fraction the count and half the volume. And I can't be bothered to read past the first few pages, which all echo each other dreadfully. How times have changed.
I just started watching 'Breaking Bad' the other week, after listening to people talk about it for a decade. A bit of credulity-stretching aside, it's very good.
You made me think in this, and previous article of his protagonist in Keep the Aspidistra flying… he loathes the masses gorging themselves on rubbish low brow books. “Anything with a muuuurder”
Perhaps literacy looks more like a higher level pursuit as the consumers of early pulp fiction migrated to TV?
· I tend to be mostly pessimistic about human nature, not unlike the enlightened Ibn Khaldun (civilizations have a way of destroying themselves) or the great Hobbes.
· But human beings also have a remarkable capacity to adapt, exchange ideas and flourish! Just look at me: an Arab from Dubai interacting with the great English writer Ed West 😊 — one of the few non-biased writers on the Anglo-Saxon Right! By non-biased, I mean not intending on hating peoples like me :(
· But the destruction of reading, the demolition of our inner lives, the end of spending long nights buried in the pages of great, demanding books — exploring and questioning the sacred cows of religion and politics (I fear this will largely be the result of Western civilization’s obsession with technological progress. Thank you very much.)
· I want to remain in the past, yes — not caring much about AI, social media, or the dreams of the evil Silicon Valley. The past feels more humane, slower and classier — for all its ugliness.
Some days I wonder if my consciousness is already in such a historical simulation with all sorts of oddities thrown in for the purposes of overcoming challenges and black humour!
Ah yes! Richard West ( I think I read some of his reporting on the Middle East years ago when I was writing my thesis) I hadn’t made the connection with Ed!
"In 1690 came America’s first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick, established in Boston by one Benjamin Harris, whose previous scoops back in England included exposing a non-existent conspiracy by Catholics to burn down London for his paper Domestick Intelligence, which gives some indication of the tone. "
The dropping of the "k" from the ends of words like "Publick", "Musick", and "Magick" was a curious innovation of Noah Webster that actually spread to both sides of the Atlantic unlike so many other examples of "American spelling" invented by him.
There is a really interesting linguistic history as to why the modern alphabet (for English) has a 'c' and a 'k' and why some words end with c, k, or ck for exactly the same sound.
I’m 70 and if it weren’t for hard work by their parents and grandparents our grandchildren would be essentially completely detached from any culture at all.
They didn’t finish a single book at my youngest son’s unstreamed “ grammar “ all the way up to GCSE’s so we had to make sure he did it at home.
It can be done but it’s b….y hard work and he’s never forgiven me for Black Beauty.
I liked the scene in Family Guy where Brian the dog is trying to impress a woman at a club, who is busily scrolling her phone, by claiming he wrote a book. When she asks what a book is, he explains, 'It's like a really long magazine . . . it's like the internet made out of a tree.'
What is particularly sad is that even in 1985, Postman still lived at a time when news had a professional tone rather than much of the "infotainment" today, the likes of which was largely confined to the 1976 satirical film Network:
"We are never bored, even when confined to our homes during the 2020 lockdown, when most people were able to access an almost infinite number of films and television shows to pass the time; had the pandemic taken place when I was growing up, the choice would have been between Hale and Pale or Watchdog or, dare I say it, a book. Imagine if we only had the Bible to entertain us?"
Had the pandemic occurred in most if not all of the 20th Century, it have been seen as an absurdity and practical impossibility send and entire planet to their homes for months for the sake of a disease that mostly just killed older people and a small percentage of them at that. There would be little practical ways to stay in communication and keep the vital machines running without going outside regularly.
"Television was one of the most quickly adopted technologies in history. Its impact was revolutionary in cultural, social and political terms. It also had a quite immediate impact on the number of hours people spent reading, so ending the supremacy of this medium after centuries."
I would add that George Orwell famously conceived of a dystopian world with ubiquitous "telescreens" in the 1940s even though the medium was just getting off the ground.
With the best will in the world to our American cousins, 'the Republic' was founded by slave drivers, defaulters on British debt, criminals and smugglers and given an intellectual gloss by malcontented lawyers.
The 'Enlightenment' was full of such pious frauds.
Yes, there is a grain of truth in your cynical (and hopefully tongue in cheek) comment. But while the founders of the American republic were not saints, they were mostly incredibly brave, driven and often brilliant men. The more history I read, the more miraculous the whole thing seems to me.
With all goodwill to American friends (and family) I can't personally bring myself to sympathise with the American Rebellion nor to accept the high-sounding subsequent justifications advanced on its behalf. I think it was a mistake and a crime.
That said, there was something undoubtedly miraculous to it.
Lecky's description of the camp at Valley Forge (December 1777) is memorable to that effect - when you consider what the republic has become:
"...The time was, indeed, well fitted to winnow the chaff from the grain; and few braver and truer men were ever collected around a great commander than those who remained with Washington during that dreary winter in Valley Forge, some twenty miles from Philadelphia. ‘For some days past,’ wrote their commander on February 16, 1778, ‘there has been little less than a famine in the camp; a part of the army has been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest three or four days. Naked and starving as they are, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery, that they have not been ere this excited by their sufferings to a general mutiny and dispersion. Strong symptoms, however, of discontent have appeared in particular instances, and nothing but the most active efforts everywhere, can long avert so shocking a catastrophe.’
Many, indeed, fell away. ‘No day, nor scarce an hour passes,’ wrote Washington in December, ‘without the offer of a resigned commission.'
Many fled to the country and to their friends, and not less than 3,000 deserters came from the American camp to the British army at Philadelphia"
A History of England in the Eighteenth Century Vol. IV
The other way of looking at it is that the French saw an opportunity to kick their enemies - the Brits - in the ribs and supported a ragtag band of rebels who otherwise wouldn’t have stood much of a chance. “Our first ally” as Obama called the 🐸
Sorry, no time to read this. Slow Horses, Season 6 has its US debut today!
While we are on the subject of The Simpsons and reading, here is a quite amusing set of dialogue from one episode:
"Carl: Let's make litter outta these literati!
Lenny: That's too clever. You're one of them!
— The Simpsons S10E22 "They Saved Lisa's Brain""
There was also one bit where Homer and Marge were inviting the baby to “come to the one you love the most” and she crawled towards the TV. And wasn’t there one where Lisa said something disparaging about the “tube” and Homer said haughtily: “I’ll pretend you never said that!”?
"Lying in politics became far more normalised as attention-spans shortened the news cycle." - When Elizabeth Warren was revealed to have been fibbing about being an American Indian, and admitted to having done it for her academic / professional advancement, I assumed that was the end of her political career. I mean, so many political thrillers revolve around powerful people trying to stop an embarrassing secret from getting out. Instead, the public mostly shrugged and kept scrolling.
I love the Jeremy Brett Holmes, easily the best Holmes ever, and it's because the actors were genuinely able to get into the skins of the 19th century to be actual people from the 19th century rather than modern actors in costumes. All the other Holmes films of the 21st century, no one would ever mistake him for a Victorian gentleman (and the less said about the dreadful recent series with a young Holmes if because it showed his mother with her long hair down in public). But watching Jeremy Brett, you really believed this is a Victorian man from Victorian England and of a certain class and attitudes and mindset. Genuine brilliance in acting and one that is impossible to find these days because all actors are too afraid to be true. And that is the problem, in our declining literacy, we are losing the quest for truth.
I'm only 46 but I remember when it was perfectly normal to find entire bookcases of newly published books from new authors and a 100,000 word count would be perfectly normal. And that was only 20 years ago (ok, 25 years ago). Now it's a fraction the count and half the volume. And I can't be bothered to read past the first few pages, which all echo each other dreadfully. How times have changed.
"a world without The Simpsons? ... The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, "
That is my world. Big fan of "Midsomer Murders", though.
I just started watching 'Breaking Bad' the other week, after listening to people talk about it for a decade. A bit of credulity-stretching aside, it's very good.
I'm sure it is. I'm just not interested.
You bring up Orwell here…
You made me think in this, and previous article of his protagonist in Keep the Aspidistra flying… he loathes the masses gorging themselves on rubbish low brow books. “Anything with a muuuurder”
Perhaps literacy looks more like a higher level pursuit as the consumers of early pulp fiction migrated to TV?
· I tend to be mostly pessimistic about human nature, not unlike the enlightened Ibn Khaldun (civilizations have a way of destroying themselves) or the great Hobbes.
· But human beings also have a remarkable capacity to adapt, exchange ideas and flourish! Just look at me: an Arab from Dubai interacting with the great English writer Ed West 😊 — one of the few non-biased writers on the Anglo-Saxon Right! By non-biased, I mean not intending on hating peoples like me :(
· But the destruction of reading, the demolition of our inner lives, the end of spending long nights buried in the pages of great, demanding books — exploring and questioning the sacred cows of religion and politics (I fear this will largely be the result of Western civilization’s obsession with technological progress. Thank you very much.)
· I want to remain in the past, yes — not caring much about AI, social media, or the dreams of the evil Silicon Valley. The past feels more humane, slower and classier — for all its ugliness.
that's very kind, and yes I understand.
OTOH, virtual reality technology that allows us to 'go' back to the past will be fun. Maybe I'll just end up locked inside one of those
Some days I wonder if my consciousness is already in such a historical simulation with all sorts of oddities thrown in for the purposes of overcoming challenges and black humour!
'one of the few non-biased writers on the Anglo-Saxon Right!'
I'm fairly sure Ed's mum is Irish.
I don’t usually look into a writer’s family origins before reading him, thank you very much 😂
Well both parents were/are fairly well-known journalists: Richard West and Mary Kenny.
Ah yes! Richard West ( I think I read some of his reporting on the Middle East years ago when I was writing my thesis) I hadn’t made the connection with Ed!
All that TV didn't harm you in the end... The acorn doesn't fall far ...blah, blah, blah
"In 1690 came America’s first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick, established in Boston by one Benjamin Harris, whose previous scoops back in England included exposing a non-existent conspiracy by Catholics to burn down London for his paper Domestick Intelligence, which gives some indication of the tone. "
The dropping of the "k" from the ends of words like "Publick", "Musick", and "Magick" was a curious innovation of Noah Webster that actually spread to both sides of the Atlantic unlike so many other examples of "American spelling" invented by him.
There is a really interesting linguistic history as to why the modern alphabet (for English) has a 'c' and a 'k' and why some words end with c, k, or ck for exactly the same sound.
You don’t need to read a book to work that out .
I’m 70 and if it weren’t for hard work by their parents and grandparents our grandchildren would be essentially completely detached from any culture at all.
They didn’t finish a single book at my youngest son’s unstreamed “ grammar “ all the way up to GCSE’s so we had to make sure he did it at home.
It can be done but it’s b….y hard work and he’s never forgiven me for Black Beauty.
I liked the scene in Family Guy where Brian the dog is trying to impress a woman at a club, who is busily scrolling her phone, by claiming he wrote a book. When she asks what a book is, he explains, 'It's like a really long magazine . . . it's like the internet made out of a tree.'
What is particularly sad is that even in 1985, Postman still lived at a time when news had a professional tone rather than much of the "infotainment" today, the likes of which was largely confined to the 1976 satirical film Network:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0LLyVNOWmPc&pp=ygUYTmV0d29yayAxOTc2IG1hZCBwcm9waGV0
"We are never bored, even when confined to our homes during the 2020 lockdown, when most people were able to access an almost infinite number of films and television shows to pass the time; had the pandemic taken place when I was growing up, the choice would have been between Hale and Pale or Watchdog or, dare I say it, a book. Imagine if we only had the Bible to entertain us?"
Had the pandemic occurred in most if not all of the 20th Century, it have been seen as an absurdity and practical impossibility send and entire planet to their homes for months for the sake of a disease that mostly just killed older people and a small percentage of them at that. There would be little practical ways to stay in communication and keep the vital machines running without going outside regularly.
"Television was one of the most quickly adopted technologies in history. Its impact was revolutionary in cultural, social and political terms. It also had a quite immediate impact on the number of hours people spent reading, so ending the supremacy of this medium after centuries."
I would add that George Orwell famously conceived of a dystopian world with ubiquitous "telescreens" in the 1940s even though the medium was just getting off the ground.
TL;DR
"The Republic was founded by intellectuals"
With the best will in the world to our American cousins, 'the Republic' was founded by slave drivers, defaulters on British debt, criminals and smugglers and given an intellectual gloss by malcontented lawyers.
The 'Enlightenment' was full of such pious frauds.
Yes, there is a grain of truth in your cynical (and hopefully tongue in cheek) comment. But while the founders of the American republic were not saints, they were mostly incredibly brave, driven and often brilliant men. The more history I read, the more miraculous the whole thing seems to me.
I think they were a brilliant collection of men personally, Hamilton and Franklin my personal favourites. A real shame Britain handled it as they did.
Certainly, they were a brilliant generation.
They were also highly self-interested.
And mostly not corrupt. Washington stepping down after his second term is one of the great events in modern western history.
With all goodwill to American friends (and family) I can't personally bring myself to sympathise with the American Rebellion nor to accept the high-sounding subsequent justifications advanced on its behalf. I think it was a mistake and a crime.
That said, there was something undoubtedly miraculous to it.
Lecky's description of the camp at Valley Forge (December 1777) is memorable to that effect - when you consider what the republic has become:
"...The time was, indeed, well fitted to winnow the chaff from the grain; and few braver and truer men were ever collected around a great commander than those who remained with Washington during that dreary winter in Valley Forge, some twenty miles from Philadelphia. ‘For some days past,’ wrote their commander on February 16, 1778, ‘there has been little less than a famine in the camp; a part of the army has been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest three or four days. Naked and starving as they are, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery, that they have not been ere this excited by their sufferings to a general mutiny and dispersion. Strong symptoms, however, of discontent have appeared in particular instances, and nothing but the most active efforts everywhere, can long avert so shocking a catastrophe.’
Many, indeed, fell away. ‘No day, nor scarce an hour passes,’ wrote Washington in December, ‘without the offer of a resigned commission.'
Many fled to the country and to their friends, and not less than 3,000 deserters came from the American camp to the British army at Philadelphia"
A History of England in the Eighteenth Century Vol. IV
The other way of looking at it is that the French saw an opportunity to kick their enemies - the Brits - in the ribs and supported a ragtag band of rebels who otherwise wouldn’t have stood much of a chance. “Our first ally” as Obama called the 🐸