...the last fifty years the United States, at the height of its world dominance and authority, has been caught in a process of persistent social devolution that has left us with a world dominated by television and the likes of David Letterman.

...the moment of "Vitalitarianism" (i.e., the cultural revolution of the 1960s) whose purpose was to overthrow the fraud of a life dominated by the "creeping catatonia" of television and the tabloid mind.

...But how interesting Trow's insight is that the '60s were not about the new or the Mod, but about nostalgia for a lost authenticity, an authenticity which the citizens of that moment could not themselves ever have experienced, except intuitively.  In this regard, Eisenhower and hippies are unlikely co-conspirators not only against the Military Industrial Complex but against Howdy Doody as well.

...the triumph of "ironic self-contempt."  Here is the real suffering heart of the matter for Trow: Growing Up Damaged.  This is the world of MTV, Jim Carey and David Letterman.  His primary evidence is the "Cold Child," the child whose mind is first formed within the atmosphere of the Candice Bergen Sprint advertisements.  Our moment, in the wake of the wreck of the '60s, is isolated, utterly lacking context, illiterate, illiberal, empty of useful information (information is all for "exchange," as Marx might say), narcissistic, and incapable of a single serious moment.  That's our post-Reagan, Clinton-in-ascendance, cultural dominant.  And damned if I know why Trow is wrong to say so.

Curtis White, Concerning Cold Children, Center for Book Culture.