How TV has trivialized our culture and politics

A Q&A with Lance State, a professor of communications at Fordham University.

The author of "Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman’s Brave New World", Strate has written extensively about Postman’s legacy, and about the cultural impact of television. He argues that our desire for entertainment has become “positively toxic” and in this new world defined by TV, the power of the image has overwhelmed our capacity to think and reason carefully. In this interview, Strate is asked what Postman meant when he wrote that our culture had “descended into a vast triviality.” He is also asked if TV has trivialized our politics and made us all dumber as a result.