ABSTRACT
Several years ago, George Will remarked: “Disparagement of television is second only to watching television as an American pastime.” Although a common exercise among the highbrow, the lowbrow, and all of the other brows in between, disparaging discourse is by no means the only response to the medium and its messages. In fact, writing about television has become a new growth industry in our country. During the past two decades, book shelves (in the libraries that Marshall McLuhan predicted would become obsolete) have begun to bend under the weight of volumes attempting to come to terms with the various aspects of TV.
