Family plots Book

Right-wing monster William Bennett's blurb was used on the cover of the hardcover edition, but for the trade paperback the publishers wisely switched to Neil Postman. There's some dumb stuff here--John Simon's cranky introduction, Armstrong Williams' view that needle-exchange programs exist to give young black men needles (no, Mr. Williams, they exist to give needles to anyone who walks in with used needles), and a description of Kurt Cobain as menacing when in fact his appeal was largely based on his cuddly androgyny. But for the most part these pieces are useful, thought-provoking, lacking in overt ideological bias. The targets--shopping malls, political correctness and questionable educational trends, processed food, the Internet as a substitute for meaningful human communication--may be familiar but the writing tends to be fresh. Trivia note: the editors mention that the earliest citation they found for the phrase "dumb down" is from "one H.T. Webster", apparently they didn't know that Webster was a cartoonist, best known for having created the famous character Caspar Milquetoast.