Human inertia makes the everyday environment, the furniture, as it were, appear to be a given.

I don't think anyone in the media thinks strategically about society.

Some fine day, Democrats may figure out how to get on the right side of the value divide - how to define America as a place of the common good and not a playground of the strong.

Mills insisted that a sociologist's proper subject was the intersection of biography and history.

Collectively, we are in thrall to media - because they deliver to us many of the psychic goods we crave, and we know no other way to live.

The moguls are driven by their respective desires for profit - period.

The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.