Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration, its symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a chorus girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment.
(from Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin Books, 1985), page 3.) |
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Exhibit D*
| The American character is preoccupied with entertainment and glitter. The symbol of this is Las Vegas with its theatre and gambling industry. (Postman, 3) |
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