"The explicit political content
of the mass media is, after all, a very small portion of their managed
time and space. This badly handled content must compete with a whole machinery
of amusement, within a marketing context of distrust. The most skilled
media men and the highest paid talent are devoted to the glamorous worlds
of sports and leisure. These competing worlds, which in their modern scale
are only 30 years old, divert attention from politics by providing a set
of continuing interests in mythical figures and fast-moving stereotypes"
(White Collar: The American Middle Classes, 1951,
p. 336).