Why I'm Re-Reading "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman
It's been one of the most influential books of my life
This is my first post on Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.
In July, I went through Aurelian Craiutu’s Why Not Moderation?: Letters to Young Radicals
In June, I went through Yuval Levin's American Covenant
In May, I went through Taylor Branch’s At Canaan’s Edge
In April, I went through John Inazu's book Learning to Disagree.
In March, I went through Mustafa Suleyman’s The Coming Wave.
In February, I went through Nick Troiano’s The Primary Solution.
In January, I went through Michael Wear’s The Spirit of Our Politics.
The book of the month schedule is here.
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman has impacted my life more than almost any other book. It's certainly true that I've mentioned Postman's book, published in 1985, more than any other over the years.
It has often been a source of what some might call self-sabotage. One of the clearest examples of this: in 2011 or so, I was asked to meet privately with Alex Wagner, who was preparing to host a daytime show about politics on MSNBC. She was looking for political reporters to be regular guests, and I was one of her prospects, having just been hired to cover the 2012 election for The Huffington Post.
Alex held a series of meetings with a roster of prospects at the Mayflower Hotel, a few blocks north of the the White House in D.C. I arrived, walked up the stairs from the lobby to the lounge overlooking the reception area, and sat down. We chatted amiably, having known one another for a while. And I proceeded to talk, at length, about how fundamentally corrupt I thought TV was as a medium. I explicitly referenced Postman and his book.
It was a perfectly pleasant conversation. I wasn't being hostile. I was just being honest. If Alex wanted me on her show as a regular guest, I wanted her to know that I viewed TV itself — the way it shaped our discourse — as suspect. Why did I tell her this? I think it was because I did not want to be drawn into that world in the first place, and if I was going to be in it, I wanted to have the liberty to be honest about my view of TV.
Alex is now hosting MSNBC's prime time show, having taken over Rachel Maddow's slot. She makes a lot more money than I do now, and since we have five kids who are going to be college-age in the next decade, that's not an unimportant detail.
But I am happy to have avoided a TV career. I went on TV with some regularity back in those days a decade ago, but never felt all that comfortable. I could have pursued it and tried to contort myself into someone who belonged in that world, but it was never a good fit for me. I know lots of amazing people and journalists with high, high integrity who have risen to the heights of TV news stardom and do amazing work that benefits the public in amazing ways. But I've also seen TV distort people into demagogic egomaniacs, high on the drugs of fame and power.
However, the point of Postman's book is less about the effect of TV on those who are on the screen, and more about the effect of TV on those who are watching it. That’s you and me.
Over the next few weeks I'll dive into the highlights and main points of the book, and I'll interview Major Garrett, chief Washington correspondent for CBS News. Major and I covered the White House together, and I know he read Postman because I brought Amusing Ourselves up a lot over the years, and I kept a list of people who had read it and who believed in the book's premise. Major has moved back and forth between TV and print/writing, and I can't wait to hear his thoughts on the book.
I am always shocked (I shouldn't be but I am) at how many people get their information from TV news. Over the years, I have come to repeat a mantra: READ the news, don't WATCH the news.
Again, I know lots of amazing people doing incredible work on TV. There is really good information on some TV programs. But on average, you will be better off if you’re reading more than watching. Postman’s book makes a robust argument for why. It's about the baseline, the average, the majority of one's information diet.
Media diets are changing, obviously, especially among the young. Most people under a certain age (say about 40?) don't watch much broadcast TV, if any. I am in my late 40's and I haven't watched broadcast TV, or cable TV news, ever. I had cut the cord by my early 20's, and that's because I read Postman.
Most young people's news and media habits are problematic for a different reason. They may be reading a good bit, but our media ecosystem has eroded to a point where there are far less standards than there used to be. But that's a different conversation for a different time.
Postman's analysis of the TV age, and the impact of TV on us, has faded from view in the age of the internet. But it is crucial, in my view, to understanding our time. A world of epistemic chaos didn't just emerge out of nowhere once people had mini computers in their pockets. The algorithmic attention casinos were unleashed on a population that had been trained — for decades — to seek entertainment rather than information.
And that is Postman's central point. The advent of television, and TV news, transformed us. It changed how we think, how we talk, and what we consider to be information. And that evolution radically shifted our public life. The ability of political leaders to move the population through appeals to reason has grown smaller and smaller. Increasingly, image ruled the day. The power of persuasion and ideas has faded. Can you be entertaining? That has become mandatory for anyone who seeks power, regardless of whether it is relevant to how effective that person may or may not be in wielding that power.
I'll delve into Postman's arguments in the weeks ahead. For now, I will leave you with an audio recording of me reading the three-page introduction to the book. It is famous for a reason.