Ronald Reagan. Rush Limbaugh. Pat Robertson. Staunch conservatives and immensely successful television personalities. Try to name a corresponding personality from the left. As Jeffrey Scheuer's Sound Bite Society asserts, television is an inherently simplistic medium rewarding inherently simplistic and sentimental communication. While critics rail against a "liberal bias" in the media, television actually encourages messages of one dimension: visceral sound bites and photo ops. Television is a tailor-made vehicle for the expressions of the right. Reagan aide Michael Deaver observed, "This country… they want 'feel-good' and fuzz and… they just want to sit in their living rooms and be entertained."

Since the 1960's, American political life has undergone some major transformations as conservative politicians and values have proliferated at the expense of liberalism, and television has become the main forum for public discourse. According to Jeffrey Scheuer, these changes are connected and the key to understanding it lies in the nature of television and its relationship to ideology.

A vibrant democratic polis is possible only if conflicting ideas are exchanged. The Sound Bite Society asks if television has served democracy. Scheuer answers with a definitive no. Our political culture has been demeaned — leaders replaced with clowns, ideology with eye candy, and debate with pairs of pontificating parrots. Scheuer challenges us to resuscitate complexity as part of our public life. The Sound Bite Society is crucial to anyone interested — on either side of the spectrum — in understanding and changing the circus that our political landscape has become.

"In this brilliant and unique book, Jeffrey Scheuer explores the various consequences of television's inherent propensity to simplify complex ideas. I highly recommend The Sound Bite Society to all students and critics of the television medium, both academic and otherwise, and to anyone concerned with politics and the future of American democracy." — Marie Winn, The Plug-In Drug

"The Sound Bite Society is a beautifully written and powerfully argued account of our televisual culture. This is social criticism of the best kind — genuinely enlightening about the structure and language of contemporary television, deeply engaged with, and persuasively unhappy about, its concrete reality and moral/intellectual effects." — Michael Walzer, professor of social science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University

Jeffrey Scheuer writes about politics, history, and the media. He's written editorials and commentary for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Dissent, among numerous others. He lives in New York City.

Visit The Sound Bite Society Website at www.thesoundbitesociety.com