Pop venality
An interesting read from Salon. I don’t follow Oprah or her reading list, but a lot of the facile self-help, intellectual laziness, and emotional insularity described in this article jibes with anecdotal observations of prominent aspects of popular culture. Whether this is a new trend is debatable; self-improvement has always been a part of the national ethos, and is often made to sound easier or more effortless than it truly is.