I do a lot of research into American social and cultural history, especially relating to popular culture and media.
The basic argument that culture is being “dumbed down” or “coarsened” has been repeated in virtually identical words in every decade for the past one hundred years. And I limit it there not because the argument doesn’t exist earlier - it most certainly does - but the societal focus on mass and popular culture didn’t truly exist in the same way earlier.
Over that century you can find the accusations coming from the left and the right, from intellectuals and the middle class, about movies, books, magazines, advertising, music, and games. The “children” are always being affected, and the adults making the accusations always say that it was different when they were children. Dire, dire consequences are always predicted for the future of America if the trend continues.
Goldberg is part of this long history. What’s truly amazing is that each decade it is approached as if it were something utterly fresh and new, and something that nobody had ever brought up in the past.
So while I kept wanting to scream at the television, “haven’t you ever read a book on cultural history, you moron?” I’m well aware that none of these tools would ever admit it if they did: it would destroy their whole argument to admit that their generation wasn’t affected by the culture that was supposedly destroying them.
Still, I have never, in all my reading, ever encountered a book that apparently puts forth a proposition that is as biased as Goldberg’s (based only on the listing and various interviews and articles, since I have admittedly not yet read the book). I’ve read the attacks on “nigger” music, on hippies as communists, on advertisers as seducers, on the stupidity of the sitcom from radio to last year, on the blatant promotion of sex to teens that will destroy their morals, on the power of “homosexuals” to destroy teen morals, and on the moral awfulness of every great writer from Twain to Hemingway to Roth. I know of nothing comparable that so refuses to equate one side of the “cultural war” with those who serve such utterly equal roles on the other.
All of the culture haters of the past had in common the notion that theirs was the only proper, moral, allowable form of culture that could be promulgated. Much of it was laughably stupid, some of it was mind-crawlingly narrow, a good deal of it was frighteningly hate-filled. Most of it could still be defended on the basic ground that popular culture is often truly sleazy, idiotic, badly-done, morally obtuse, and enjoyed by mouth-breathers who wouldn’t know something better if it came in a tub of popcorn.
All that is absolutely true of popular culture today. But this isn’t the fault of leftists. Popular culture has always been this way and always will, as long as people can make money off of it. This is not at all what Goldberg’s book appears to say, or what came out of his mouth on The Daily Show.
And that’s why Stewart should have doubled his efforts to discredit him.
