Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter

In this stimulating meditation, Hart, who teaches government and communications at the University of Texas, contends that more important than hand-wringing over TV's superficiality is the recognition that the medium has revolutionized politics by altering how we relate to events, encouraging viewers to ``feel good about feeling bad.'' Television has fostered personality politics, the author maintains, because it is better at presenting emotions--simple and sexy--than ideas. Coverage on an emotional level produces what he calls ``a kind of shirt-sleeve imperialism,'' in which viewers ``possess'' politicians but ignore policy. Hart cogently shows that the Rhetorical Establishment--a totemic system that concentrates on a limited number of activists as spokespeople--often distracts us from the true powers in society. Diverging from those who urge greater substance on the tube and those who suggest that viewers learn doublethink, to believe and doubt simultaneously, Hart proposes a ``New Puritanism,'' a reclaiming of civic consciousness in the home, school, church and union hall. (May)