Sound and Fury

"Never in our history has the American political system seemed so aimless, so irrelevant, and so downright disgraceful as it does today. Television has become dominant to the point that it now not only serves as the sole viable medium for the debate of issues but has also provided the fodder for political platforms, and even budding presidential candidates. "Objective" reporting in the print media is political double-speak, but, even more important, it deprives us of the context that would allow us to make an informed judgment about a given issue. What we are left with, simply, is the punditocracy: the highly visible, extremely well-paid, and seemingly omnipresent pontificators who make their living offering "inside political opinions and forecasts" in the elite national media. It is their debate, rather than any semblance of a democratic one, that determines the parameters of political discourse in the nation today." "In his shrewd, provocative, and entertaining Sound and Fury, journalist and historian Eric Alterman takes the first comprehensive survey of the world of political pundits - their history, their influence, their style and substance. How have the George Wills, the John