'A reflection of us in the extreme'

Chris Hedges burst on the public scene in 2002 with his fiercely argued book "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning," which ultimately led to his departure from The New York Times.

In recent years the veteran war correspondent has been turning his polemical rage against American culture. His new book, "Empire of Illusion," is a devastating critique of celebrity worship, among other topics that forms a volcano of derision toward "the cult of the self."

In this adapted excerpt on the Michael Jackson memorial service -- "a variety show with a coffin" -- Hedges advances Christopher Lasch's late 1960s "Culture of Narcissism" theme with a vengeance:

"It was the final episode of the long-running Michael Jackson series. And it concluded with Jackson’s daughter, Paris, being prodded to stand in front of a microphone to speak about her father. Janet Jackson, before the girl could get a few words out, told Paris to “speak up.” As the child broke down, the adults around her adjusted the microphone so we could hear the sobs. The crowd clapped. It was a haunting echo of what destroyed her father."

Hedges puts the blame squarely on the corporate state, which he believes infects most of daily life to an impossible degree. And these corporations do seem to know more about us than we realize, which is why were are inundated with celebrity and "reality TV" schlock like never before:

"We measure our lives by these celebrities. We seek to be like them. We emulate their look and behavior. We escape the messiness of real life through the fantasy of their stardom. We, too, long to attract admiring audiences for our grand, ongoing life movie. We try to see ourselves moving through our lives as a camera would see us, mindful of how we hold ourselves, how we dress, what we say. We invent movies that play inside our heads with us as stars. We wonder how an audience would react. Celebrity culture has taught us, almost unconsciously, to generate interior personal screenplays. We have learned ways of speaking and thinking that grossly disfigure the way we relate to the world and those around us."

His proclaiming the death of literacy -- especially the decline of newspapers and the publishing industry -- is not overstated. If anything, Hedges has come to this realization late, even as he builds an historical timeline that stretches back decades. He's 52, a few years older than me, and having growing up in a television culture, I've never felt part of a literate society.

The print institutions for which Hedges mourns have been dominated by the corporations he loathes, so his thesis isn't entirely convincing. Interestingly, he didn't include in his book a screed lambasting the Internet and blogs as an inadequate replacement for the journalism being lost with newspapers.

But his worry about the intellectual decline that stems from print-based habits, plus an academic industry devoted to churning out docile worker bees trained in "systems management," is especially sobering. The loss of what he calls "moral autonomy" is in full force, because we've given up on studying and employing the lessons learned from the humanities.

Some of the sources for his thesis are books I've also read and been deeply influenced by, including John Ralston Saul's "Voltaire's Bastards" and "Life: The Movie" by Neal Gabler.

Here's Hedges recently on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." This interview lasts about 30 minutes, and he sounds a lot less scorching than he reads: