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If someone held a gun to my head and asked for a precise and concise definition of irony (it could happen!), I would say only this: Neil Postman died two days before Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor -thus narrowly missing out on the single best example of what he was screaming about all those years ago. This book was foundational for me. Postman delivers a passioned polemic about the entertain-at-any-cost ethos of our current culture, and how the irrestible siren song of triviality is more dangerous to our democracy than any demagogue's propaganda. Here he is in an interview describing television as the great destroyer of context:

“Television is a medium which lacks a because. What I mean by this is that language has embedded in it all these becauses. This happened because that happened. Television doesn’t have a because. How many people, when seeing a newscast about, say, a serious earthquake or an airplane crash, will actually start to cry or grow silent at the tragedies of life? Most of us don’t, because right after the story about the airplane crash, there’s going to be a thing for Burger King or, if not that, a story about the World Series or some other event that would basically imply, ‘don’t take this story about the airplane crash too seriously, it’s just something to amuse you for the moment.� So I think that goes a long way toward promoting the idea that there is no order anyplace not only in the universe, not on the planet, not on your continent, not even in your home or your town.�