Modern technology and media have proved to be Valium for our leisure time.  They have turned the United States into a nation of spectators, more eager to watch life than to participate in it.  We want out art, for instance, to provide distraction rather than require concentration, asking it for either escape or knee-jerk political messages.  We want shock or sleep.  Period. . . .
      Perhaps Jean Baudrillard is close to the truth after all when he characterizes ours as the age of simulation.  For just as shopping malls simulate the outdoors, replacing sun and trees with flourescent lights and green plastic "plants," we simulate danger with amusement parks, friends or enemies with talk-radio hosts, rebellion with torn jeans and black boots, sex with lewd phone conversations, revolution with improved fabric softeners, and freedom with the newest panty liner.  We simulate real life by eliminating risk and commitment, and end up mistaking what is real for what is artificial.  We exist, that is, encased in a giant cultural condom.  (Horstman, Joey Earl.  "Channel Too: The Postmodern Yawn."  The Other Side 29.3 [May-June 1993]: 35.)

Daily flossing and Right Guard, it seems, rather than truth or justice, are the weapons necessary to defeat Satan and his decidedly unsanitary and uncouth army.  We decorate Sunday school rooms to resemble the cozy artificiality of morning talk-show sets.  We adopt the sound-bite techniques of political advertising to avoid offending or even challenging our constituency, and we evaluate our ministers on their ability to convincingly imitate network news anchors.  "And now over to brother Jim in the choir loft for an update on 'The Old Rugged Cross.'"
      And then we wonder where our youth get the idea that worship and entertainment are inseparable.  (Alexander, John.  "Jobs against the Church."  The Other Side 29.4 [July-Aug. 1993]: 53.)