senatorial or presidential office go to television 
consultants and are told about the kinds of 
gestures and the kinds of styles and how to 
condense down their thoughts into manageable 
forms. People say that that is bad. That politics is 
a sound byte, has led to simplification and 
oversimplification and reductiveness and a kind of 
dumbing-down of important policy issues. 
Certainly, Neil Postman, who I respect very much—I 
think Neil Postman is wonderful—Neil Postman 
certainly believes this: that television is responsible 
for a kind of a dangerous oversimplification of our 
politics. I don’t agree with this at all. I feel that 
unlike Neil Postman’s admiration for the great