So American culture is itself a hybrid and lends itself to use in other people's hybrids.

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.

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.

Americas are, for a variety of reasons, the most adept at producing the kind of entertainment that delivers easy satisfactions.

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.

Navigation is power of a limited sort - it enables us to manage the immensity of the media torrent.

Who of us does not recognize that the life we live, however larded with brave talk about values and thought and ideals, is not actually a life dedicated to immersion in the endless torrent of images, songs, sounds and stories?