Reply #13: Wait a minute

[dmallind]

He wrote it.

He knows what he intended it to mean, and anyone else who starts hypothesizing is simply reading more into the work than was put there. Yes it's possible an especially acute mind can use critical analysis to detect subconscious influences on the author that caused more meaning to be there than he intended, but it's far more likely that a pseudo-intellectual can guess wrong or just parrot what others have said.

He makes a fair point - does anyone want to defend the impact of television on the cultural and political awareness of the average citizen?

As has been pointed out, the two posited meanings - the marginalization of literature and the warning against censorship - are far from mutually incompatible. We KNOW the first is explicitly there because we know what the guy who wrote it was saying when he did so. We can with varying levels of credibility try to prove that the latter is there too, but there is no argument that the first is NOT there.

What does it matter if he's a freeper? He can't write well or can't with genuine merit and feeling lament the soporific retarding effect of televized pablum just because he disagrees with us politically? From all I've read Hitler loved dogs. I do too. I have no hesitation in saying that, on the subject of dogs, I agree with Hitler; or that on the subject of television's detrimental impact that I agree with Ray Bradbury. Only a total dolt would say they disagree with an author on what he intended his book to say, regardless of his politics.