There was a time when a literary-minded soul could go into a Barnes & Noble anywhere in this great nation and buy him/herself a canvas tote bag that had been emblazoned with the likeness of Charles Dickens or George Eliot or Virginia Woolf or some other giant of letters. Now there is a new face on the tote bag, and it belongs to Stephen Colbert. Now, I know Stephen Colbert is a satirist of the first order and is technically a book writer as well (I really didn’t care for I Am America, and So Can You), and also happens to be wildly popular. But geez Louise, who’s next? Suzanne Sommers? All around me, I see smart men and women, really intelligent people, slowly letting their brains turn to goo, and while Stephen Colbert is hardly the prime malefactor of this offense, when you move from Dickens and Woolf to Colbert, I’d say yes, it’s a step goowards. Look, here’s a challenge. For the next week, keep track of what the people around you talk about. Your friends, your family, your co-workers. You’re going to get a lot of sports, a lot of American Idol, a lot of Dancing with the Stars, a lot of Star Trek and Angels and Demons. There is nothing wrong with any of these amusements, not at all. But see how many newspaper or magazine articles get mentioned. See how many books. Intellectual life is dying in this country, and it’s dying because educated people are choosing not to live it.
I know this will be no surprise, but I signed up for a couple of feeds that keep track of all the “trending topics” on twitter, thinking that it would be a handy way to keep up with the zeitgeist.
It turns out that people twitter about American Idol, twitter about Twitter, and twitter about the Lakers.
Bleh.
Twittering about Twitter, eh? Now that’s what I call navel-gazing!