While I agree with most of Ted's remarks and do not wish to draw the list
down in particular political debates, allow me to clarify this link. Much
of what interests me in Percy is that much of what he is critical about in
contemporary society seems to apply to the dysfunction in the political
system. In other words, you get what you want in a democracy (though HL
Mencken had several better ways of putting it).
I do not object to being critical of a particular politician per se, but
of ad hominem attacks such as 'this was an example of faked
sentimentality, therefore the person has must not have genuine emotions.'
What you're seeing may just be an example of that particular person using
their personal history to their advantage in the public arena (which has
gone on for ages). To not draw a dicotomy in this debate between public
selves presented on TV and actual private selves is, I think, to become
compromised by the very problem we are discussing, that of mistaking
affected emotion for the true thing. That's the only thing I meant to say
(it was getting late). It's perfectly legitimate to criticize Gore's
public or private conduct, though I am loath to do the later and reluctant
to attempt to do so when the two appear to overlap and there are other
things to discuss. (Percy's discussion in _Lost in the Cosmos_ of an
actor - Pacino or De Niro, I think - is applicable). Gore may have to
'fake sentimentality' on TV because that's what it demands of all of us.
This does not mean Gore's sentimentality in its second, more personal
sense, is faked. We must understand what's going on and be distinct,
which is difficult because most Americans, the research shows, are apt to
mix the two in forming an opinion about individual politicians (I
won't go into the research here). It just didn't seem appropriate to me
to do it here.
There is indeed a general inability of anyone to communicate not peculiar
to television; it is part of the general problem of living in the fallen
world. Far too many people mix that problem up with the general one of
television (a medium with peculiar quirks, like any other). I'm glad to
see Ted is one of the few people who sees that. In my profession you hear
a lot of reformers saying 'TV' is bad or 'the internet' is so much better
because it allows two way communication. They're just different ways of
saying something. A medium can communicate some meanings better than
others. It's just a different way of embodying symbols. (EG footnotes
work better in a book than they do a speech; intonation is the complete
opposite though this doesn't preclude a writer like Faulkner from making
significant inroads in the opposite direction).
TV doesn't cause the problems of modernity; it may simply highlight them
because something about modernity itself compells us to use it that way.
We must not make mistakes about causality or we are likely to substitute
TV for something not much better. For example, of what use is the 500
channel cable superhighway that was in vogue a few years ago if you can't
produce your own content. You've confused making something bigger with
actually changing it.
I make such a fine point about causality here only because we follow
Percy's detective work very closely and the problems of modernity have an
insidious way of going unseen in our very investigation of it (but
then, the hermeneutic circle is everywhere).
On that cryptic note,
Wade.