Blogs, podcasts and videologues are expressly designed to cater to a certain niche audience. It would be foolish to think that these formats could form the basis of a commercial endeavor into mass media. But I refuse to believe that there is no more room for commercially viable innovation in the merger of information and entertainment.
Are we to resign ourselves to the hugely depressing assumption that there’s simply no way to make honest and intelligent discourse engaging and entertaining to a wider audience?

I think it’s wrong to assume that, for example, a debate over the merits of interventionism vs. non-interventionism must be overly stuffy and dryly academic. One just need keep in mind that the listening audience consists of regular people who can best process new ideas in terms of metaphors and analogies. Granted, some intellectuals have severe difficulties communicating to laypeople, but some don’t. I for one remember a sense of giddy excitement when I was first exposed to ideas that caused me to question the validity of the two-dimensional partisan divide, compelling me to think in terms of concepts and values, rather than the superficial grab-bag political position staking I had thus far accepted at face-value. I was very entertained and invigorated by the feeling that I was learning how the world really worked. Most people are.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, The Bill Maher show comes the closest to approaching what I’d consider an intellectually elevated infotainment program in practice. For the most part, Real Time with Bill Maher is an exercise in how to waste its own potential, but on the rare occasions its good, it’s really good and very entertaining. He invited a diverse mix of intelligent people to discuss issues of weight (among other things) which at times acheived an honest airing of real ideas, real perspectives and real emotions that, however brief, enraptured the audience completely.

If you subtracted the obnoxious egotism, bad humor and pandering to celebrities, it might have led the way in cementing a successful formula for expansion into commercial and basic cable television. More importantly, a successful show of that nature would set a precedent and invite imitators, at some point permeating the collective consciousness to compete with pundit shows and opinion “journalism” as a popular vehicle for political and social knowledge.

Are you telling me that this is impossible?

A conservatism of place and virtue, as I have sometimes called it, would have to tell people that they cannot have everything they want and should not want many of the things they desire, and this makes not only for poor entertainment but also a good way to get people to switch to another channel. One reason why Limbaugh and his imitators succeed as much as they have is that they flatter and applaud their audiences and locate the causes of all of the problems elsewhere.

Do ordinary, marginally politically aware people really want to be condescended to, or is it just that honest and intelligent people with good ideas just aren’t inclined to persue a career in mass media ,or simply can’t make themselves entertaining?

I really enjoyed this post. “Freedom” seems to have undergone some perverse conversion or soul-transplant in certain right-wing circles. It seems true, well-ordered, freedom would consider more than our immediate desires, and think about the mutual benefit of our neighbor and our stewardship of natural resources,

Then again, what do we really expect from Mr. L.