From "The Grey Lady" (the NYTimes, which is groaning under "bad times" as well), news of layoffs at Macmillian, the publisher which owns Holt and of course our friends at St. Martins and Tor/Forge.
Macmillian's owned, in turn, by a German combine, Holtzbrinck. Yep, Random House is owned by foreigners as well. Nice to see folks tasked with keeping American brains trained, creative, imagining controlled by Germans. Between that and cheap Chinese garbage folk are buying at Wal mart, I'd say it's "evening" in America. "Mourning" in America? How about that play on words? Nevermind their business model is warped--books aren't Beyonce CDs. Nevermind the real reason for this crap has more to do with, by analogy, Sam Zell loading the Tribune Company with debt from his leveraging spree, or the perfidy and non-regulation of the financial sector than with "young people not reading." The result is the same. Shrink. Dummi-fy. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy.
All of a sudden, that movie Idiocracy doesn't seem so amusing. Just like Office Space is hitting a bit too close to home now.
5 comments:
At least someone is making money: Guy Ritchie made $76 million on the divorce.
I thought the beginning of Idiocracy wasn't the destruction of intelligent media but more stupid people having kids and smart people being infertile?
@Pebbles
All I can say is, Guy is one, high-priced man-ho.
@carl
Actually the problem is that civilization removes the selective pressure against stupidity. In more barbaric systems, stupidity is a capital crime, whereas civilization coddles it and allows it to reproduce. As intelligence takes significant effort, and as civilization doesn't reward that effort to the degree that most need to choose it over the easy and unpunished road to stupidity, you end up seeing a massive shift toward stupidity. Thus doth civilization carry the seeds of its own destruction.
"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph."-REH
And oh, by the way, Detroit no longer has a daily newspaper.
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