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And I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose Audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.

— David Foster Wallace E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction (1993)

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More quotes by David Foster Wallace

It is to say that he has exactly one on-air job, and that is to be stimulating.

John Ziegler, who is a talk-radio host of unflagging industry, broad general knowledge, mordant wit, and extreme conviction, makes a particular specialty of media criticism.

Hosting talk radio is an exotic, high-pressure gig that not many people are fit for, and being truly good at it requires skills so specialized that many of them don't have names.

The fact of the matter is that it is not John Ziegler's job to be responsible, or nuanced, or to think about whether his on-air comments are productive or dangerous, or cogent, or even defensible.

Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: David Foster Wallace (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.