My friend Amy and I
My friend Amy and I went to see Todd Gitlin speak at the Commonwealth Club on Monday. A student activist in the 1960’s, Gitlin is considered one of the nation’s foremost media and cultural critics and as written maybe a half-dozen books about The Racial Hyposcrisy of Liberal Movements, The Oligopoly of Prime Time T.V. and other such topics that fascinate me. I had read The Whole World is Watching, about 60’s activism and media, in college and found so convoluted that I can only describe the experience as akin to backstroking in a pool of tapioca.
It didn’t improve a whole lot for me. While Gitlin has smoothed out his thoughts with age (or maybe just expresses them better live than in print), I still found his arguments to selective to the point of cowardice. His new book, Media Unlimited, is all about how we’re living a life so overrun with sounds and images, that things like community and thoughtful discourse are slowing erroding away. However since “the media” isn’t going to roll over and play dead because Todd Gitlin says it should, many in the audience wanted to know what Professor Gitlin saw as the counterplan to all this. Precisely what media and how much of it should we consuming then?
Answer: “I don’t prescribe such things.”
My answer: What hooey. Gitlin wants us all to bask in is indignation yet has nothing but that to add to the discussion. He then coats himself with intellecutal teflon by saying “there’s too much media” (which we all know), then refusing to offer an answer to “then what?” That isn’t criticism. It’s fact finding in service of itself. And for someone of Todd Gitlin’s stature, we both expected more. Even if it was only twelve bucks.