Seducing America
Subtitle: how television charms the modern voter
By: Roderick P. Hart.
Edition: Rev. ed.
Publisher: Sage Publications
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Thousand Oaks
Language: eng
Number of pages: 209
Subjects: Television in politics -- United States
Description: Seducing America is a psychological investigation of how television has changed American politics. The author's central claim - that television makes us feel good about feeling bad about politics - is buttressed by a wide-ranging analysis of political television. Roderick P. Hart argues that television has traded political wisdom for five lesser emotions - feelings of intimacy, discernment, cleverness, activity, and importance.

These feelings have become television's distinctive currency, postmodern tokens for a manifestly uncertain world. Hart explores the considerable costs of this legacy for governance and urges that it be supplanted by a New Puritanism, a set of community-based attitudes badly needed in the nation at present.

New pedagogy combined with Hart's rigorous blend of rhetorical and social scientific research and eloquent and passionate writing make this book a superb supplementary text for political communication and media studies courses.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-193) and index.
Table of contents: title: Political feelings; title: Feeling intimate : the rise of personality politics; title: Feeling informed : the effects of personality politics; title: Feeling clever : the cold comforts of postmodernism; title: Feeling busy : the frenzy of establishment politics; title: Feeling important : the temptations of alternative politics; title: Residual feelings.