It’s always very interesting to see how we are seen from a distance. When you are in the center of the maelstrom that is American media, it is often hard, if not impossible, to get a perspective of what it all looks and sounds like from outside. I’ve lived abroad a few times and each time I was overseas, I was amazed how my perspective of America changed. Gone was the feeling and notion that America was the center of everything. Gone, certainly, was the notion that any news having to do with Tom Cruise was at all important.
So here is a really fun piece from Jesse Kornbluth at mediabistro on exactly this topic. Kornbluth is living in France and he offers his perspective on America and the American media from that vantage point.
He makes many of the same observations, notably that the American media when seen from afar comes across less as an instrument of information providing crucial knowledge to active and involved members of a democratic republic (not that we thought that was the case, but you know, that’s the hope), but rather as a cacophonous cornucopia of celebrity-driven drivel. Thin gruel indeed. Of course, most intelligent, “aware” Americans will find the arguments here obvious. But I did quote enjoy the article, if anything just to refresh and reestablish some notions I’ve held for a while.