"I think that the main problem with the press is not bias. The complaint of those on the left and conservatives is that it is. I think the main problem with the press, rather, is superficiality. Their inability to go beyond the narrative structure of antagonist and protagonist; who's up and who's down; their inability to understand, frame, and report on issues that are not simply political. The tendency is to force these kinds of cultural issues onto a political frame of reference; to see them only as struggles of power."
James Davison Hunter
in a Mars Hill Audio Journal interview with Ken Myers [ from 1994!]
... don't you want to keep reading???? [below]
"We're in a situation where the common understandings of public life; the habits and rituals of social interaction; the bonds of community life, have largely weakened, if not disintegrated. This is the process we're seeing. And in societies where this happens, the only thing left to order public life is power. This is why we invest so much into politics. This is why actors on both sides of the culture war are seeking political solutions; seeking to realize their cultural ends and ideals through political means - because the only thing that's left now is politics.
There are no political solutions to a conflict that is - at its heart - cultural. So we need to rediscover the pre-politcal dimensions of public life.
Right now we've conflated public with political. And we need to realize that they are not the same. And we need to not only realize that, but recognize and cultivate aspects of public life that are not simply political. It's in that context that these Utopian impulses get played out, and why in the final analysis these debates in real life end up polarized and interminable."
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