The increasing control of U.S. mass media by a mere handful of corporations has — rather counterintuitively — created a situation of extreme fragmentation, a kaleidoscope of information options.
~ David Foster Wallace
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The increasing control of U.S. mass media by a mere handful of corporations has — rather counterintuitively — created a situation of extreme fragmentation, a kaleidoscope of information options.
~ David Foster Wallace
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If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home.
~ David Foster Wallace
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‘Act in Haste, Repent at Leisure’ would seem to have been almost custom-designed for the case of tattoos.
~ David Foster Wallace
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Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?
~ David Foster Wallace
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I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
~ David Foster Wallace
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There’s always a Mormon around when you don’t want one, trying your patience with unsolicited kindness.”
~ David Foster Wallace via The Atlantic
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KFI’s John Ziegler is not a journalist — he is an entertainer. Or maybe it’s better to say that he is part of a peculiar, modern, and very popular type of news industry, one that manages to enjoy the authority and influence of journalism without the stodgy constraints of fairness, objectivity, and responsibility that make trying to tell the truth such a drag for everyone involved. It is a frightening industry, though not for any of the simple reasons most critics give.
~ David Foster Wallace
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The fact of the matter is that it is not John Ziegler’s job to be responsible, or nuanced, or to think about whether his on-air comments are productive or dangerous, or cogent, or even defensible. That is not to say that the host would not defend his “we’re better”—strenuously—or that he does not believe it’s true. It is to say that he has exactly one on-air job, and that is to be stimulating.
~ David Foster Wallace
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Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans.
~ David Foster Wallace
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Rush Limbaugh is the third great progenitor of today’s political talk radio partly because he’s a host of extraordinary, once-in-a-generation talent and charisma—bright, loquacious, witty, complexly authoritative—whose show’s blend of news, entertainment, and partisan analysis became the model for legions of imitators.
~ David Foster Wallace
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