Recognizing the merits of James Baldwin need not detract from the admiration due to Shakespeare, a sentiment Jacoby herself would probably second. Just so, valuing the wit of "The Colbert Report" or the intricacies of "The Wire" doesn't automatically imply a depreciation of "War and Peace." Each form has its own artistry and makes its own demands on creator and audience, and new forms (such as the novel in the 18th century) arise to speak to new audiences in a new way. Jacoby rightly considers Al Gore to be an example of the sort of serious, studious public figure who gets unfairly written off as "arrogant and patronizing" in the dumbed-down politics of today. But she carefully avoids acknowledging that Gore managed to break through the public's indifference to the issue of global warming by figuring out how to present his ideas visually, first in a PowerPoint presentation, and later in a movie, demonstrating that it's possible to do justice to complex issues in those forms.
Likewise, Colbert's deft dispatch of Westmoreland (getting the man to betray himself, no less) conveys the sleaziness of this type of "values" crusader more persuasively and conclusively than any number of written jeremiads by left-wing commentators. Is a top-drawer television series like "30 Rock" automatically a lesser creation than, say, the live performance of a play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, simply because the first is TV and the second is theater, the first filmed and broadcast, and the second written by a man who wore a powdered wig? You can waste hours parsing the relative greatness of various artworks in different media, and that would be time much better spent watching "Project Runway."
The real problem with TV, and to a lesser extent the Internet, is that while some of it is excellent, much of it is not -- and all of it has become ubiquitous. As Jacoby astutely points out, reading does not "constitute a continuous invasion of individual thought and consciousness ... printed works do not take up mental space simply by virtue of being there; attention must be paid or their content, whether simple or complex, can never be truly assimilated." Unless you make a point of turning off the TV and putting the computer to sleep, they can easily fill up your day and mind, gradually atrophying the mental muscles uniquely exercised by reading. Abstaining, for many people, turns out to be as easy as bypassing a cupboard stocked with chips and cookies and snacking on carrot sticks instead. To hope that the American public will pick the nutritious but difficult over the easy and tasty is to bet on a losing horse.
No wonder that the concluding chapter of Jacoby's book is so gloomy. All we have to count on, she writes, is the fortitude of "parents and citizens determined to preserve a saving remnant of those who prize memory and true learning above all else. Adult self control, not digital parental controls, is the chief requirement for the transmission of individual and historical memory" to the next generation.
But wait -- is it really that bad? The current crop of leading presidential candidates not only aren't dumb, they aren't even trying to appear dumb, apart from occasionally droppin' their Gs. The only candidate who professes not to believe in evolution, Mike Huckabee, has fallen behind a front-runner, John McCain, who is widely disliked by fundamentalists.
If TV and the Internet (more prevalent now than ever) are supposedly rotting our brains, turning them into mulch for the poisonous growth that is fundamentalism, what seems to have reversed that trend, even if only temporarily? Perhaps we're better able to assess the "reality-based" consequences of putting a fundamentalist in the White House than we once appeared to be. The problem is, when push comes to shove, we don't always feel like facing reality.
The missing factor in Jacoby's formula is just that: In addition to being capable of rationality, we also have to want to be rational. Intellect, copious reading and education by themselves are no guarantee of reasonable or even sensible behavior, as the neo-conservative true believers responsible for the Iraq war have amply demonstrated. Yet this is one aspect of American religiosity that doesn't seem to interest Jacoby much. In considering the Second Great Awakening, the outburst of religious revivalism that swept through the nation in the early 19th century, she kicks around some possible causes (the "unsettled" social conditions following the Revolution, the difficulties of life on the frontiers, etc.) in a desultory fashion. Then she writes, "in any event, the reasons why fundamentalism triumphed over 'rational' religion in the American spiritual bazaar are less important than the fact that fundamentalism did succeed in capturing the hearts of large numbers of Americans."
It's hard to imagine what could be more central to Jacoby's subject than the motivations of those Americans who chose what she describes as "willed ignorance" over reason. Isn't it likely that the recent resurgence of that ignorance arises from similar needs and desires? If there were some other way to address those needs (or fears), perhaps fundamentalism would be less appealing, and perhaps reason could be made more so. However, that would require admitting that people who are capable of reason will nevertheless sometimes pick an irrational course of action or belief. Rational people do this all the time, of course -- even intellectuals. But rationality has its own ideology, and one of its tenets is the conviction that, if given a fair chance, reason must always carry the day.
If you believe that, then you can only arrive at one conclusion, Jacoby's: It's not that Americans won't be rational, but that we can't. There's enough evidence of our poor schooling, susceptibility to pseudoscientific hucksterism and general cluelessness to justify that opinion, to be sure. But if that's really the case, then it really is down to a few brave souls, committing to a doomed battle to preserve that "saving remnant" and fighting the dying of the light.
About the writer
Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon.
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