Junk Media

Have we thought about how we feed our heads.

We now pay attention to what we put in our bodies, more or less, but have we really started to think about what we put in heads. I’m talking about “junk media.”

For years and years Americans have subsisted on an intellectual diet of vapid soap operas and sitcoms. If this is not bad enough at key temporal junctures (when our attention is greatest) these dramas are interrupted by efforts to sell us products we usually do not need and can ill afford. Products such as bread, with little nutrional value; vehicles, such as SUVs, which have little correspondence with actual use unless such use is to waste valuable fuel and parking space; or loan programs, with high interest rates, we can not afford to pay off.