During the worst years of apartheid, the most popular show on television in South Africa was " The Cosby Show". Why did people living under a system built on the idea that Black people were inferior and threatening flock to a show that portrayed African Americans as comfortably mainstream? The South African government maintained a ban on television until 1976. Weaving together South Africa's political history and a social history of television, Ron Krabill challenges conventional understandings of globalization, offering up new insights into the relationship between politics and the media.--[book cover].