Why Rush Limbaugh and the New York Times are Natural Enemies

Caleb Crain's "Twilight of the Books" in the December 22/31 '07 New Yorker is an interesting article about the decline in reading in the United States and elsewhere. As Caleb presents it, there are key differences between readers, who think in "literate" terms, and TV watchers, who thnk in "oral" terms.

But you know what's even more oral than televison? Talk radio. See if the following differences between the "literate" and "oral" types makes you think of anyone:

Whereas literates can rotate concepts in their minds abstractly, orals embed their thoughts in stories. According to Ong, the best way to preserve ideas in the absence of writing is to “think memorable thoughts,” whose zing insures their transmission. In an oral culture, cliché and stereotype are valued, as accumulations of wisdom, and analysis is frowned upon, for putting those accumulations at risk.

There’s no such concept as plagiarism, and redundancy is an asset that helps an audience follow a complex argument. Opponents in struggle are more memorable than calm and abstract investigations, so bards revel in name-calling and in “enthusiastic description of physical violence.”

Since there’s no way to erase a mistake invisibly, as one may in writing, speakers tend not to correct themselves at all. Words have their present meanings but no older ones, and if the past seems to tell a story with values different from current ones, it is either forgotten or silently adjusted.