Books, Arts & Manners: Mind Candy

Inside Prime Time, by Todd Gitlin (Pantheon, 369 pp., $16.95)

DEMOCRACY,” H. L. Mencken once wrote, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Commercial television—the quality of which is the single most effective argument ever advanced against the free market—operates on much the same theory. Todd Gitlin, a West Coast academic with impeccably left-liberal credentials, offers in his new book, Inside Prime Time, a lot of ornate codicils to Mencken’s typically blunt assertion. These can be skipped, fortunately, leaving the reader with a pretty convincing factual demonstration of the premise that commercial television, being a money-making enterprise, is naturally inclined to devote the bulk of its energies to the creation of what one television producer calls “mind candy.” The conclusions that Mr. Gitlin draws from his researches are, of course, another story entirely; still, you will likely have as much fun digging up the author’s axioms as he had planting them.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.

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Inside Prime Time, by Todd Gitlin (Pantheon, 369 pp., $16.95)

DEMOCRACY,” H. L. Mencken once wrote, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Commercial television—the quality of which is the single most effective argument ever advanced against the free market—operates on much the same theory. Todd Gitlin, a West Coast academic with impeccably left-liberal credentials, offers in his new book, Inside Prime Time, a lot of ornate codicils to Mencken’s typically blunt assertion. These can be skipped, fortunately, leaving the reader with a pretty convincing factual demonstration of the premise that commercial television, being a money-making enterprise, is naturally inclined to devote the bulk of its energies to the creation of what one television producer calls “mind candy.” The conclusions that Mr. Gitlin draws from his researches are, of course, another story entirely; still, you will likely have as much fun digging up the author’s axioms as he had planting them.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.