On Sunday, October 11th at 12pm noon (ET),
BookTV on CSpan2 will be re-airing their “After Words” interview of Chris Hedges on his new book, Empire of illusion: the end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle.
I saw this segment last weekend, and then I bought the book. Hedges has more depth and perspective than I expected from some of his previous work.
His thesis also made me think of Stephen Colbert, and how much fun it would be to see Hedges interviewed on Colbert’s show. The kinds of “illusion” and “spectacle” he’s talking about after “the end of literacy” are exactly the kind of “Truthiness” that Colbert parodies, so spectacularly, on his show every night. It would be fun to see what Colbert would do with that. Since he did interview Hedges on an earlier book, I expect Hedges will be on again for this; but I’m posting this now to maybe help get the ball rolling.
In the book, Hedges has enough to say about literacy and education — and especially higher education — to warrant putting this here on Curricublog (rather than the blog I keep just so I have someplace else to post things that are not curriculum-related); although the BookTV interview doesn’t get into that as much.
The BookTV segment can also be viewed online at its C-SPAN video library page, where there’s also information on the event and on how to buy the DVD.
Tony's curricublog 
One Comment
I have followed the writings of Chris Hedges since he was stationed in Beirut,Lebanon,working for The New York Times. I must say that his eloquence,honesty,high moral ground,broad knowledge of history and farsighted mental horizon are his truly powerful tools he utilizes so effeciently to give his readers brilliantly structured articles/columns. That is why he has such a large number of followers,espacielly at Truthdig Website.
The fanatical members of the evangelical Christian Right hate his guts because he has exposed them and their agenda as they should be exposed. He has done so in his book entitled “American Fascists”. A fascinating and daring exposure.
I,for one,have admired what he has written sofar;and I must admit that I have become addicted to his ways of structuring his essays/columns. I take my time to read them and sometimes I study them,depending on the topic he writes about and the degree of interest I have in the topic. If this is not called addiction,I just do not know what is. Perhaps,just perhaps,because I am a scientist by formal education,training and experiences I have found the writings of Chris Hedges so admirable and fascinating,indeed.