I'm teaching a class on media and politics this semester. This is the third time that I'm teaching the class, so all the kinks should be ironed out, but I keep fiddling with the syllabus and the readings and the thing keeps mutating.

I added some juicy new readings on the popularity of the Daily Show with young people and how they really think that they are learning a lot from it, but they're not. There's also the very weird trend of mixing politics and entertainment and that people feel that it's perfectly ok to just subsist on a diet of ha-has. It makes for a good class, because I can do cheap things like inserting Daily Show clips into my lecture. Yes, I'm feeding into this ha-ha culture, but what can I say? I like good evaluations.

The latest edition of the New Republic has a ton of stuff on the politics of the media. An article on Politico, a Paul Starr article  on the death of newspapers, an elegy to a local newspaper. I might do something on these articles later in the week. Meantime, check out the depressing stats.