The Political Pundits surveys in detail the small, elite group of persons who comment on and analyze politics in newspapers and newsmagazines, on radio and television, through lectures, books, and all other forms of political media. Dan Nimmo and James E. Combs discuss the key political role pundits play, their methods and strategies, and the potential danger they present to American political life. Our democracy is being transformed into a punditocracy, which replaces serious citizen debate with discussion guided by show business values. Punditry, Nimmo and Combs argue, produces...

The Political Pundits surveys in detail the small, elite group of persons who comment on and analyze politics in newspapers and newsmagazines, on radio and television, through lectures, books, and all other forms of political media. Dan Nimmo and James E. Combs discuss the key political role pundits play, their methods and strategies, and the potential danger they present to American political life. Our democracy is being transformed into a punditocracy, which replaces serious citizen debate with discussion guided by show business values. Punditry, Nimmo and Combs argue, produces...

Should we take the idea of play seriously? Since the publication of Huizinga's "Homo Ludens" in 1938, a provocative literature has developed in philosophy and social science that does. Combs argues that we should understand play both as a generic concept with considerable power to explain human activity, and as a contemporary procept that demystifies some of the puzzling trends and innovations emerging in the quickly developing new social world of the 21st century.

Combs explores the thesis that play has a central role in our understanding of human activity and social and political...

The notion of society and politics as drama has drawn much attention in recent years. Yet despite the heritage begun by Aristophanes, few students of politics and the social order have taken comedy and comic inquiry seriously. This book revives the Aristophanic notion of democracy as comedy. Herein the reader will find why and how different aspects of American democracy--public opinion, interest groups, the presidency, and so on--are comic. It is the author's contention that the comic perspective offers insight and understanding on the actual operation of democracy. And they invite all...

Collecting together some of the best thinking about the relationship between movies and politics, this book, originally published in 1993, encourages an awareness of the political dimension of film, both for film scholars and those entering the film industry. Eight essays are grouped into four parts addressing political ideology and movie narrative, political myth in the movies, political history and movie culture, and political communication and the movies. An introductory essay, as well as prefatory remarks to each of the four parts, brings additional insight and perspective and puts the...