We have become so accustomed to its discontinuities that we are no longer struck dumb, as any sane person would be, by a newscaster who having just reported that a nuclear war is inevitable goes on to say that he will be right back after this word from Burger King; who says, in other words, “Now . . . this.” One can hardly overestimate the damage that such juxtapositions do to our sense of the world as a serious place.
