“Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media.”

— Tom Lehrer

On the current state of satire, in Rhino Records online chat (17 June 1997)
Context: Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now — to quote myself at my most pretentious — is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste. For example, the freedom (hooray!) to say almost anything you want on television about society's problems has been co-opted (alas!) by the freedom to talk instead about flatulence, orgasms, genitalia, masturbation, etc., etc., and to replace real comment with pop-culture references and so-called "adult" language. Irreverence is easy — what's hard is wit.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update July 24, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media." by Tom Lehrer?

Tom Lehrer 60

American singer-songwriter and mathematician 1928

Related quotes

“Mass democracy, mass morality and the mass media thrive independently of the individual, who joins them only at the cost of at least a partial perversion of his instincts and insights. He pays for his social ease with what used to be called his soul – his discriminations, his uniqueness, his psychic energy, his self.”

Al Alvarez (1929–2019) English poet, novelist, essayist and critic

Page 254.
The Savage God (1971)

“The mass media are class media.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

2 MEDIA AND CULTURE, Fabricating a "Cultural Democracy", p. 107
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

“The net shifts from mass media to mess media.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

“I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“The word "communist" (as well as "Marxist") has been so overused and so abused by American leaders and the media as to render it virtually meaningless.”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

The Left has done the same to the word "fascist".
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Introduction

“If it's a flash it's been an awfully long flash. I've been around for 20 years in one of the largest media and political markets in the country, so I'd call it more of a slow burn.”

Jack Layton (1950–2011) Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

On criticism that he is an unknown, Jan. 26, 2003.[citation needed]

“For two decades the supporters of Bolshevism have been hammering it into the masses that dictatorship is a vital necessity for the defense of the so-called proletarian interests”

Rudolf Rocker (1873–1958) anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist

The Tragedy of Spain (1937)
Context: For two decades the supporters of Bolshevism have been hammering it into the masses that dictatorship is a vital necessity for the defense of the so-called proletarian interests against the assaults of counter-revolution and for paving the way for Socialism. They have not advanced the cause of Socialism by this propaganda, but have merely smoothed the way for Fascism in Italy, Germany and Austria by causing millions of people to forget that dictatorship, the most extreme form of tyranny, can never lead to social liberation. In Russia, the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat has not led to Socialism, but to the domination of a new bureaucracy over the proletariat and the whole people. …
What the Russian autocrats and their supporters fear most is that the success of libertarian Socialism in Spain might prove to their blind followers that the much vaunted "necessity of dictatorship" is nothing but one vast fraud which in Russia has led to the despotism of Stalin and is to serve today in Spain to help the counter-revolution to a victory over the revolution of the workers and the peasants.