short and sweet

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On the radio, a woman was saying today that her experience with books of various kinds led her to believe, among other things, that fewer and fewer people read long works, even when they were well written.

The growth of the Internet, she said, had led to a proliferation of badly-written long stuff and had also fueled a mind-set that has little or no capacity to read anything long ... or even long-ish. There was economy of language, she said, and then there were sound bites ... I couldn't quite figure out where the line was between the two.

And I couldn't help but agree in a lot of instances. I come out of a news world where once the axiom held sway: "Stand up, speak up, and shut up." But now there seems to be an institutionalized movement afoot ... keep it short or risk being ignored. I can't help but think of it as an inescapable Fox-News effect ... short, self-centered and, often, dumb.

OK ... short and sweet: Sex, sex, and more SEX... and there you have the nightly news.

Oh well, time passes.
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