relativism, blaming anthropologist Margaret Mead
for the former and sociologist Max Weber for the lat-
ter. He identified Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and
Thomas Kuhn as among the sources of relativism.
An absolutist in ethics, he condemned the social
movements of the 1960’s and reproached leftists
for making thinkers he saw as right wing, such as
Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, speak
for the Left. An elitist in aesthetics, Bloom hated
rock and roll and subsequent derivative forms of
music, which for him were merely sexual. He pre-
ferred the subtler emotions of classical music.
Bloom’s arguments rang true with many who
were dismayed at the continuing evolution of the
Academy. His criticisms of education were neither
new nor exclusively conservative: Similar criticism
had been made when American universities began
teaching American literature, rather than an exclu-
sively English curriculum, and they had also been
leveled in England against those who had intro-
duced English literature into a previously Greek-
and Latin-dominated curriculum.
Impact The Closing of the American Mindcatapulted
Bloom from being only a fairly well known social phi-
losopher and translator of Plato to occupying a
prominent place in the ranks of the conservative in-
tellectuals of the Ronald Reagan era, including Wil-
liam Bennett, Robert Bork, Francis Fukuyama, E. D.
Hirsch, and John Silber. Bloom’s book was frequently
considered alongside Hirsch’s best seller,Cultural
Literacy, which appeared the same year.
Further Reading
Buckley, William K., and James Seaton, eds.Beyond
Cheering and Bashing: New Perspectives on “The
Closing of the American Mind.”Bowling Green,
Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular
Press, 1992.
Graff, Gerald.Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching
the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
Hirsch, Eric Donald.Cultural Literacy: What Ever y
American Needs to Know. Boston: Houghton Mif-
flin, 1987.
Stone, Robert L., ed.Essays on “The Closing of the Amer-
ican Mind.”Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1989.
Eric v. d. Luft
See also Bennett, William; Bork, Robert H.; Con-
servatism in U.S. politics; Education in the United
States; Gallaudet University protests; Mainstreaming
in education; Multiculturalism in education; Politi-
cal correctness; Standards and accountability in edu-
cation.CNN
Cable television
news channel
Date Debuted on June 1, 1980CNN was the first twenty-four-hour daily news channel to
deliver news to a global audience. By the end of the 1980’s,
people around the world relied on CNN as a primar y news
source.Cable News Network (CNN) was the brainchild of
entrepreneur Ted Turner. Turner built a family
outdoor-advertising business into a communications
empire through the acquisition of television and
radio stations. He aligned himself with the fledgling
cable industry to transform local Channel 17 in At-
lanta into a “superstation” whose broadcasts reached
a national audience. He invested in satellite dish
technology and occasionally confronted the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) over approval
of his acquisitions and innovations. Turner bought
Atlanta’s professional baseball and basketball teams,
as well as the broadcast rights to Atlanta Flames
hockey games, to build his catalog of programming
and provide twenty-four hour content. With this
background of accomplishments, Turner turned his
attention to creating a twenty-four-hour cable news
network.CNN on the Air CNN debuted on June 1, 1980. De-
spite the loss of the satellite originally scheduled to
carry the network, 1.7 million cable subscribers re-
ceived the signal through the Turner Broadcasting
System (TBS) and saw live satellite feeds from
around the world. Minutes into the first broadcast,
CNN got its first scoop, airing live coverage of Presi-
dent Jimmy Carter’s visit to the hospital bedside of
wounded civil rights leader Vernon Jordan.
Borrowing elements from twenty-four-hour news
radio, CNN’s format was the news “wheel.” Major
news stories repeated throughout the day; new sto-
ries were added every so often. Breaking news always
took precedence. CNN took the emphasis off the
newscaster and placed it on the news itself. The net-220 CNN The Eighties in America