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"Never in our history has the American political system seemed so aimless, so irrelevant, and so downright disgraceful as it does today. Television has become dominant to the point that it now not only serves as the sole viable medium for the debate of issues but has also provided the fodder for political platforms, and even budding presidential candidates. "Objective" reporting in the print media is political double-speak, but, even more important, it deprives us of the context that would allow us to make an informed judgment about a given issue. What we are left with, simply, is the punditocracy: the highly visible, extremely well-paid, and seemingly omnipresent pontificators who make their living offering "inside political opinions and forecasts" in the elite national media. It is their debate, rather than any semblance of a democratic one, that determines the parameters of political discourse in the nation today." "In his shrewd, provocative, and entertaining Sound and Fury, journalist and historian Eric Alterman takes the first comprehensive survey of the world of political pundits - their history, their influence, their style and substance. How have the George Wills, the John McLaughlins, the Robert Novaks, the William Safires, the Pat Buchanans, and all the op-ed and opinion makers whom we have come to regard as authoritative voices on the subject of government actually achieved their authority? How do they deploy their power? Who really listens to them, and what does their ascendancy mean for our political future?" "Sound and Fury opens with a historical overview of punditry, focusing on the greatest of all pundits, Walter Lippmann, avatar of punditry's Golden Age and as close to a philosopher as the popular media has ever produced. Tracing Lippmann's heirs, Alterman presents a series of portraits of the leading pundits of the Reagan/Bush years, a period when the profession came into its own - no more notably than in the person of the jaunty courtier George Will, and no more potently than around the bullyboy roundtables, the weekly pundit sitcoms, led by the likes of punditry's P. T. Barnum, former Watergate priest John McLaughlin. The book closes with an examination of the punditocracy at work in the Bush era, and how it successfully - and dangerously - defined the shape of the United States' response to Mikhail Gorbachev, the end of the Cold War, and that ne plus ultra of pundit adventurism, Operation Desert Storm." "One of the most original and witty treatments of American politics in decades, Sound and Fury is a searching look at the diseased American body politic and its blithely hubristic talking heads."--BOOK JACKET.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Journalism, Mass media, Political aspects of Journalism, Political aspects of Mass media, Politics and government, Press and politics, Radio talk shows, Television and politics, Television talk shows, Journalismus, Médias, Presse, Talk-shows, Publieke opinie, Aspect politique, Presse et politique, Politieke commentaren, Politique et gouvernement, Télévision et politique, Medienpolitik, Talk shows, United states, politics and government, 20th century, United states, politics and government, Political aspects, Government and the press, JournalistsPlaces
United States, États-Unis, USATimes
20th century, 20e siècleShowing 6 featured editions. View all 6 editions?
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1
Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy
2019, Cornell University Press
in English
1501740989 9781501740985
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2
Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy
January 2000, Cornell University Press
Paperback
in English
- Rev Sub edition
0801486394 9780801486395
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3
Sound and fury: the making of the punditocracy
1999, Cornell University Press
in English
0801486394 9780801486395
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4
Sound and Fury: The Washington Punditocracy and the Collapse of American Politics
August 1993, Harper Perennial, Perennial
in English
0060924276 9780060924270
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5
Sound and Fury: The Washington Punditocracy and the Collapse of American Politics
August 1993, Harper Perennial
Paperback
in English
0060924276 9780060924270
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6
Sound and fury: the Washington punditocracy and the collapse of American politics
1992, HarperCollins Publishers
in English
- 1st ed.
0060168749 9780060168742
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-312) and index
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- Created September 26, 2008
- 15 revisions
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