No Business Like Show Business

Politics in the 21st century are being perverted by a transition from traditional values to production values -- good lighting, clear audio, to enhance politics as entertainment, and politics as show biz. I credit Andrew Trabulsi for reminding me of Daniel Boorstin's 1962 classic, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Boorstin argued that presidential debates and press conferences are "pseudo-events" in the sense that they are less about reality than a kind of pseudo-reality manufactured mainly for the sake of filling the news hole....