Virtuous Reality: How America Surrendered Discussion of Moral Values to Opportu Nists: Nitwits, and Blockheads Like William Bennett

I'm a parent of boys 9 and 12. I try to choose which movies they see, but they see the ones on my 'black list' at the neighbors down the street. When my older boy is on the net I wonder what he is looking at (usually it is the 'Hate Hanson' chat group, cheat codes for a computer game, or email to a friend). He likes 'gangsta rap' and I don't know why. I've spent a ton of time working on fatherhood issues and I do everything in my power to be a good parent. I am 50. This book is important because Katz reminds us: 1. the world is complex, more so than is comfortable for us to think, 2. human nature is resilient, more so than we may trust, 3. morality and conscience arise from the quality of day to day (minute by minute?) life in our families and communities, and they will not be undermined by dirty pictures or songs, 4. the modern media, internet and culture provide an incredible vista for our children, both awful and sublime, but an incredible amount of information by any measure. My 'take away' from Katz's book is to trust my children, and myself, in negotiating the new media culture. My job is to help my kid come to terms with the reality of our world, not to try to block it out. As Katz reminds me, it is not going to go away anyhow. This is a good book. I give it a full 5 stars because Katz is such a good writer. Some of Katz's prose jumps off the page.

Katz's faith that his 15 year-old daughter has the savvy to negotiate the internet wilderness is a wonderful testament to the new generation which has to endure morals-preaching presidents of Oval Office sexcapade, virtuecrat Republicans who whine when their affairs are exposed, and a so-pious adult generation whose own morals are nothing for the young to copy. Katz's fury at the ridiculous hippie-prig anti-cyberspace unholy alliance of the '90s is worth the few facts on youth risks that he gets wrong. A great book, a needed message, and one ironically large in the post-Starr era.

Only a third of the way through the book and I can already say it's one of the most sane arguments I've heard on the topic. Written in the Tom Paine essay style, it is refreshing both in terms of the thinking put forth and the expression of thought. If you read nothing else, read the "Media Mantra" Katz suggests, and escape the delusion that navigating the issues of new media is way too complicated. Hats off to Katz -- can't wait to read the rest of the book

The book was as good as it threatened to be. Next time, lte's give Jon a flamethrower before he heads to Washington D.C.He joins critics who take issue with "those who know better than you what's best for you". This has been a subtle theme of media critics from Rush Limbaugh's dittoheads to the Phi Beta Kappa Key Reporter.It is also with extreme, vicious pleasure I note that one of the three local Cleveland bookstores that did not have thisbook available have gone out of business. This store decided that it knew better than it's market what the market needed. I will not miss them

This book is controversial partly because Jon Katz says the kind of things that MORAL WHITE MEN fear. Net abuse blames societies ills on a tool, like blaming the pencil that wrote the nasty note. In first year art classes you learn, ART reflects LIFE. I don't find Katz unreachable in his intelligent argument. I get into his prose, I dig his way with the language and I admire his courage for spewing his own salve against the canker sore that is the current media. When it comes right down to it, Katz is one of us, by us, I mean the geeks who made the Net what it is. He's our buddy, he's our pal, he is saying what we've been saying for years! This is our world - and it screams with freedom. Remember Freedom? Read Jon Katz Virtuous Reality and you will