He’s a professor of communications at the University of Toledo. I wrote an Überpost largely about his book The National Rifle Association and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage back in January of last year, The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation. Professor Patrick’s investigation into the inner workings of “Professional Journalism” (and yes, those are “scorn quotes”) was fascinating, especially in conjunction with the exposé works of outcast journalists Bernie Goldberg and John Stossel.
Well, he’s got a new book out, Rise of the Anti-Media: In-forming America’s Concealed Weapon Carry Movement. He dropped me an email today to let me know it was out. I emailed him back congratulating him on his new book, and informing him that I’d be waiting for the paperback. You can get it now for 20% off, but that’s still $56.00.
I see that college textbooks have still not come down in price.
I asked him about the title, too: why “In-Formed”? He responded:
I wanted to emphasize the old meaning of the term “inform” which at one time meant (and still does) to imbue with shape and spirit, while the modern “informed” person is the saddest and most tiresome creature on earth, who after watching a newscast and reading a newspaper imagines the few facts and allegations he has encountered bear some resemblance to social-political reality.
A main reason the concealed carry movement worked (and gun culture generally) is because it created its own anti-media, alternative media, often computer mediated, that in-formed it, and therefore its people were capable of directed action in concert over time, as opposed to people with vague anti-gun attitudes who had been informed in the only most superficial and ephemeral sense by mass news media. –people who then move on like a browsing goat to the next morsel of news, the last forgotten, with no behavioral correlates to whatever fleeting attitudes the last piece of news may have briefly stimulated . On the other hand, gun people have an attention span because they are in-formed and their beliefs have strong correlations in behavior such as voting and voluntary political association.
“(T)he modern “informed” person is the saddest and most tiresome creature on earth, who after watching a newscast and reading a newspaper imagines the few facts and allegations he has encountered bear some resemblance to social-political reality.”
There’s Quote of the Day material!
Honestly, it does look like an interesting book, and I’d love to read it – I’m just not going to pop $56 on a copy right now.