Can someone agree to post questions for week ten so I have something to respond to? It is the last week of class and I need one more answer submitted.
1) Postman makes the claim that in modern political discourse, complex political ideas have little or no place in the conversation surrounding an election. Instead, we have candidates who worry about their image more than their ideas. He said “You cannot do political philosophy on television. Its form works against the content.” Do you agree that the age of content has passed when it comes to political ideas? Can candidates skate into high office because of their good looks or image alone or with only vague traces of substance or is the content of the ideas still important to us? Put another way, does the “pretty” candidate always win in the end? How much of a disadvantage does a strange looking candidate (examples: Mike Huckabee or John McCain) have against a good looking one (examples: Mitt Romney or Barack Obama)?
2) In chapter two, Postman argues that television has made the American discourse “shriveled and absurd”. He says that television as at its worst when it tries to be the most content orientated. The television is a means of conveyance for entertainment and triviality. When it tries to raise the discourse of its products beyond that, it instead pulls the important into triviality along with all the entertaining junk because our brains organize television as entertainment, not serious subject matter. Do you agree or disagree with this assessment? Why or Why not?
3) The implication of McLuhan’s idea that the medium is the message (or plays a huge role in the effectiveness of the message), as stated at the end of the selection, is that speakers must either choose the proper medium for their rhetoric or adapt their style to reflect the medium they are forced to use. Using the classic example of the debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, the radio audience overwhelmingly endorsed the idea that Nixon won the debate and the TV audience, who say a scowling and sweaty Nixon compared with a handsome and composed JFK, thought that Nixon had badly lost the debate. This example seems to support the idea that Nixon should have changed his style to reflect the television audience’s expectations since that audience was larger than that of the radio, which McLuhan calls a hot medium, lending itself to details and serious discussion. Do you agree with my assessment of this selection and my use of the debate example? Why or why not?
