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I was struck reading at work today how the Atlantic Monthly is kind of the mirror image of Reader's Digest. RD takes popular, vaguely conservative ideas or trends, repackages them into instantly comprehensible nuggets for a reader who will then feel informed but in an oddly limited fashion. The Atlantic takes the same ideas, puffs them into pieces far too long for their own good, packaging them together in such a way that the reader with several hours to spare will feel informed, but in an oddly limited fashion.
Both, then, achieve the same insidious goal of taking some portion of the ever-shrinking literate segment of the population and placing them on some sort of intellectual moving escalator-type illusion, apparently taking one step forward but actually propelled several steps back at the same time.
Both, then, achieve the same insidious goal of taking some portion of the ever-shrinking literate segment of the population and placing them on some sort of intellectual moving escalator-type illusion, apparently taking one step forward but actually propelled several steps back at the same time.
Posted on Monday, June 30, 2008
1 Comment(s):
I agree, and don't read the Atlantic any more for the same reasons, but you might want to make a few exceptions, for articles such as this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200211/fallows
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