mass media of this kind up until the 1960s, and it helped sustain and
enliven a working-class culture. It had a big effect on British
society.
What do you think about the internet?
I think that there are good things about it, but there are also
aspects of it that concern and worry me. This is an intuitive
response—I can’t prove it—but my feeling is that, since people
aren’t Martians or robots, direct face-to-face contact is an
extremely important part of human life. It helps develop self-
understanding and the growth of a healthy personality.
You just have a different relationship to somebody when you’re
looking at them than you do when you’re punching away at a
keyboard and some symbols come back. I suspect that extending
that form of abstract and remote relationship, instead of direct,
personal contact, is going to have unpleasant effects on what people
are like. It will diminish their humanity, I think.
Sports
In 1990, in one of our many interviews, we had a brief discussion
about the role and function of sports in American society, part of
which was subsequently excerpted in Harper’s. I’ve probably
gotten more comments about that than anything else I’ve ever
recorded. You really pushed some buttons.
I got some funny reactions, a lot of irate reactions, as if I were
somehow taking people’s fun away from them. I have nothing against
sports. I like to watch a good basketball game and that sort of thing.
On the other hand, we have to recognize that the mass hysteria
about spectator sports plays a significant role.
First of all, spectator sports make people more passive, because
you’re not doing them—you’re watching somebody doing them.
Secondly, they engender jingoist and chauvinist attitudes, sometimes
to quite an extreme degree.
I saw something in the newspapers just a day or two ago about