The garden is a simple place. Maybe half a dozen plant species interacting with a few humans and whatever bees are about. All else is driven out; weeds uprooted, rabbits trapped and slaughtered with genocidal fury. The once beautiful and diverse biome is stripped of its robustness. The gardener doesn’t notice the change as he dies before it becomes apparent, but generations pass and the soil is robbed of its wealth.

The Fertile Crescent becomes the Sandbox, the breadbasket of Rome becomes the Egyptian desert, and we all turn our collective eyes away because we are trapped in our gardens, for there is not enough left to hunt and gather to survive. And slowly the Earth is stripped of all life in service of a single species who will learn only after it is far too late what it has done.

” … Paul Ryan’s six pack abs are front page news…the “issues” driving the Presidential campaign.” One may agree or disagree with Ryan, but I believe it’s his budget proposal that’s the news. The writer might ease off the entertainment page and pay attention to current events.

Half the article is like that. The other half is a movie synopsis. I’ve seen the movie many times. It holds up well. Why do I need a synopsis?

The author could have made his point about integrity in a couple’ grafs. He never did get around to a salient message about “art and manipulation.” He needs a tough love editor.

People are free to do what they please in the United States. A human being can allow himself to be lead about like a sheep or he can educate himself and make informed decisions.

Are corporations evil? No. They sell a product that is bought by people. Robots don’t buy things. If you don’t like what a company does stop buying their products. Protest against their inhuman manufacturing practices. Use the money you earned honestly, if there is such a thing in your opinion, and take a full page add in the times expressing your thoughts against the evil empire.

This country was built by the people and is ran by the people. Humans are smart. Humans are capable of choice. The movement of one finger can turn off the TV or radio.

The wheat being the gardener’s lot . . . not to “gain” by taking from others, but to create from the compost and atmosphere what serves one’s needs and even the needs of others. To do so with honor and goodwill and harmless resourcefulness. That’s a form of love based on the knowledge that we are joined truly in life even though separated falsely in the human mind.

I agree you can’t throw us all away because we’ve made mistakes or are selfish or mean or stupid. There wouldn’t be anyone left. But what Shawn has done so well is to call out those in his profession for whom someone must lose for them to gain. And offer a good reminder of the virtues of integrity and responsibility for our actions. His thesis is really copped from the wisdom once spoken that “what you do unto the least of these my brethren, you do unto Me.” That has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the quality of humanity’s zeitgeist to which everyone constantly contributes. It’s about what each one settles for, minute by minute, and why.

I don’t hear Shawn vilifying anyone, or condemning Gladwell–he just pointed out Gladwell’s exclusive center of gravity on this. I don’t see Shawn copping Neil Postman’s theme any more than Neil copped it from countless others who didn’t happen to write books about it. And let us not for a moment believe that the beautiful notion of forgiveness means accepting mediocrity and bullshit as tolerable. It distinguishes the doer (you made a mistake) from the deed (and here’s what it’s costing you).

Finally, I don’t see a nasty mean streak here, but I do hear a ton of frustration at why people sell out for such pittances when they could be adding to the substance of their profession and the betterment of humankind or at least their own character. With every syllable we utter or write, we vote for the life or death of something. I hear Shawn voting passionately for the values of integrity, honesty and good character. Lehrer voted against all that and he will foot the bill–not because of what anyone says, but because the karmic scorekeeper never makes mistakes. And it’s good that we all know about this and learn from it. If this or any truth is irritating, one should first exam that part of himself that finds it so.

Nothing personal here, JDub. The subject could be argued till the end of time I suppose. This is a true rant and should be treated as such. Thank you.

Those words are synonymous to nightmare…

Clearly the man has been thoroughly blackballed if even Wired magazine has to tread lightly with his name. Wired does not exactly represent the fabled public interest. It’s a tech industry rag, not the New York Times. Why all this consternation that Lehrer might worm his way into a job at a magazine that famously propagandized the egregious internet bubble of the late 1990s?

It seems to me, Shawn, that in seeking to further vilify Mr. Lehrer you are exhibiting a nasty mean streak.

Malcolm Gladwell, if he is indeed Mr. Lehrer’s “friend,” has every right to speak kindly about him in public and empathize with him to the extent he can. He was clearly making a personal statement. It’s monstrous of you to suggest that a personal friend ought to throw him under the bus, and that his failure to do so represents a lack of ethics.

As to your overall thesis, that we are perhaps living in the “opposite” of Big Brother, does it not strike you as slightly ironic that you’re copping the central theme of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death without giving him any credit? That idea belongs to him, not you, and I find it rather hard to believe you’ve never read his work. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and instead recommend to your readers that they actually DO read his book if they find your concerns about society justified.

Forgiveness is a virtue. The world’s most famous written testament to its power is the Bible, of course — a book whose ethics we follow implicitly and whose commandments you cite despite centuries of proof from learned scholars that it is, in fact, full of forgeries and fabrications, including entire books of the New Testament.

Shall we toss it out, Shawn, or shall we separate the wheat from the chaff? I vote the latter, both with respect to books and to the actions of individuals.