"We hunger for objectivity, but increasingly swallow "news" like Jell-O shots in ad hoc cyber-saloons. We marinate in punditry seasoned with only those facts and opinions we can digest without cognitive distress.
"Sometimes we feel a little queasy about it--queasiness we project back onto the media.
"But we don't really get agitated until we encounter the other guys' media. Those guys are consuming lies. They are getting juiced up. Their media diet is making them stupid.
"What if our media choices are making us stupid? What if they're shortening our attention span, exciting our lusts, eroding our values, hobbling our judgment?
. . ."The media machine is a delusion. What we're really dealing with is a mirror: an exalting, degrading, tedious, and transcendent funhouse mirror of America.
..."So when we see ourselves distorted in the media mirror, we should probably consider that some of what we see is actually us."
-Brooke Gladstone, The Influencing Machine (pp. xiii, xxi)
What does my media mirror say about me?
