For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norms, even our cultural ideal.

All institutions have lapses, even great ones, especially by individual rogue employees - famously in recent years at The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the three original TV networks.

The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.

The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.

Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

In the John Paul II days, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had the advantage of staying in his cupboard - the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - exchanging views only with the Pope, and speaking publicly only through carefully written missives on doctrinal issues.

Increasingly, the picture of our society as rendered in our media is illusionary and delusionary: disfigured, unreal, out of touch with reality, disconnected from the true context of our life. It is disfigured by celebrity, by celebrity worship, by gossip, by sensationalism, by denial of our societies