ashlayla, Bourdieu (response to CMCstudent)

“Our news anchors, our talk show hosts, and our sports announcers have turned into two-bit spiritual guides, representatives of middle-class morality. They are always telling us what we ‘should think’ about what they call ‘social problems’” (329).

I agree with CMCstudent and how this quote is very true of some of today's television shows and their hosts. I have never actually seen an episode of The John Daily Show, but I have seen plenty of Oprah shows. In response to CMCstudent's question "do we just make them seem so brilliant?" I feel like we do make them into someone who is really smart. Oprah has been given this identity that she is a genius on the topics she writes about because so many people are buying her books and magazines. In this economical crisis, we are beginning to assume that Oprah is smart on saving and investing because she is including this kind of information on her shows and her books. I agree that Oprah has a huge cult that surrounds her. If Oprah didn't have a cult of people watching her show and reading her books, she wouldn't be so popular. During the election, Saturday Night Live became extremely popular because of the skits that involved the candidates. SNL was, in a way, telling us what we should think about the candidates through these skits. We had seen what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden were really like when they gave their speeches. But we believed that they were something different because of what we were seeing on SNL. It's like CMCstudent said, comedy shows can get away with making fun of things because they cover up the seriousness with humor. We laugh because we know that what Jon Stewart and the SNL actors are saying isn't 100% true.