Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Floating
Lewis Lapham, reflecting on the passing of Arthur Schlesinger in this month's Harper's, brings back a very apt epigram:
The Chesterton quote perfectly the sums up the Imus thing--not the "controversy" but the condition. Having an image of your face on the tee vee is the new walking about.
Lapham also writes eloquently of the "attitude of mind formed in the floating world of timeless fantasy, impatient and easily bored, less at ease with a stable story line than with the flow of brand-name images in which nothing necessarily follows from anything else."
posted by Blicero : 4/17/2007 07:51:00 PM
...I notice that the reading of history instills a sense of humor and makes
possible the revolt against what G.K. Chesterton once called the "small and
arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."
The Chesterton quote perfectly the sums up the Imus thing--not the "controversy" but the condition. Having an image of your face on the tee vee is the new walking about.
Lapham also writes eloquently of the "attitude of mind formed in the floating world of timeless fantasy, impatient and easily bored, less at ease with a stable story line than with the flow of brand-name images in which nothing necessarily follows from anything else."
posted by Blicero : 4/17/2007 07:51:00 PM
