I decided to post a rant about why I hate Neil Postman because it's only fair since he ranted for the entire book. I, however, am numbering my reasons (Neil should have done this)...
1. He used the word "discourse" too many times. Use a thesaurus. Define the word maybe. I think if I got a penny for every time Neil used that word, I would be rich. He couldn't even resist putting it on the cover!
2. I very much agree with what Sam said in class about the lack of statistics or, in other words, evidence, to support Mr. Postman's claims. Without them, the book becomes a giant editorial. It was all opinion and no fact.
3. Continuing with the opinion theme, books that talk about opinions generally at least state once what the opposing argument would be. Not Neil. That would take away from his style of expressing his opinion. I think his plan was to repeat his opinion enough times until we gave in and accepted it as the truth.
4. He never stuck with television which is what the book was supposed to be about- isn't that why the people on the cover have t.v's for heads? I agree that television had its disadvantages, but he had no right to attack photography. It's kind of an art form. And its certainly not poisoning our minds or making us stray away from novels and towards picture books. And the telegraph? That was a quality and not to mention unprecedented idea that turned into arguably the most innovative invention of all time. Choose your battles, Neil.
5. Postman missed the obvious a lot. For example, while proving the overwhelming pace of news programs made news trivial, he missed the point that they go through it so fast because there is so much news to go through. Without news shows, we would all be confined to our little CT bubble and not know what was going on in the world at all until 10 years later when a book came out about it. Where is the logic in that?
I could go on all day but I will end it there.
I'm gonna just play devil's advocate for a minute and stick up for Neil.
ReplyDelete1. If a word works, why change it? I just read the first few chapters of Hemmingway's book, and he's also quite fond of repeating the same word over and over again. He's arguably one of the best authors of all time, so if Hemmingway thinks using a word a bunch of times is cool, then I'm bound to agree with him.
2. The book sort of is an editorial. I don't have any issue with the lack of statistics. I'm not even entirely sure what kind of stastics you want. If he were to say how many people watched TV every day in the 80's that would mean nothing to me.
3. He talks a little bit about the opposition that does things like create educational tv programs for kids to be taught in school, and basically everyone who's on TV is opposition. There aren't very many people who say "TV is the best thing to ever happen to America's youth!"
4. I don't think that the focus needed to be on television. I'm gonna be cliche for a minute, and say "don't judge a book by it's cover". He definitely talked about how we are "amusing ourselves to death", he just meandered around to get us there. He gave us a lot of history, which I found very interesting.
5. I don't think he missed the obvious, I think he just pick and chose his battles. I mean I understand that the news goes fast because there's a lot of it, but after we look at the quantity of the news look at the quality. how crucial is it for me to know that a cat go stuck in a tree in Windsor?
Sorry if I come across as rude, just trying to defend Neil.
when does he attack photography?
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DeletePg. 72 all about photography
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