Todd Gitlin
Todd Gitlin
Todd Gitlinis an American sociologist, political writer, novelist, and cultural commentator. He has written widely on the mass media, politics, intellectual life and the arts, for both popular and scholarly publications...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSociologist
CountryUnited States of America
consequences global hitherto midst scale tremendous
We are in the midst of a tremendous global revolution, ... and the consequences are on a scale that are hitherto unprecedented.
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I think we have a national attention deficit disorder, ... Because we're so itchy. We're changing the channel, the camera is constantly moving, the edits are flying thick and fast.
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I think there's a desire for results, a hard-bitten realism. The primary goal is not some sort of symbolic display, or some sort of posture or attitude, but results. If that's what it means, then I applaud the turn to practicality. Today the far right is in charge, and I don't think you can create the possibility of broad-based radicalism until you defeat the far right. Put the center in power and then you have the possibility--or the luxury--of radicalism.
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My book is focused on the power of the American state, not least because the government of the United States governs so much that the case could be made that everybody around the world ought to have a vote in determining some of its policies.
anxious confused generally life people threatened ways
People who feel that their ways of life are threatened or feel generally anxious or confused about the way things are going are disposed to look for causes.
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Again, the only trends that interest the corporate boys and girls are demographic and businesslike. I doubt the think tank reports interest them much.
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You're in the news business and you're in the business of arresting the attention of people and prying them away from what they take for granted. They must read the next day's paper and so on. While the desire to gain attention is a dynamic in journalism, it's not the only one. The predominant dynamic since journalism's inception has been the desire to capture the attention of people. Another dynamic is the extension of democratic enlightenment.
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Can't address the big fact that the bulk of life is taking place under the pressure of an onslaught of images.
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I have no action plan, and as a writer I don't want to get hung up on the advantages and disadvantages of particular strategies.
access journalism
Access journalism has become the ends, not the means.
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Americas are, for a variety of reasons, the most adept at producing the kind of entertainment that delivers easy satisfactions.
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All I will say is that there are particular features of the American constitutional system that renders a third party futile - at best.
mark century demographics
A century of convulsive change leaves huge demographic gouge marks.
thinking trying limits
I am a realist as well as an idealist, and I think that it is incumbent upon those of us in opposition to try to work within what are always arduous circumstances to stretch the limits of the possible.