Good news for the White House. Despite all the criticism whined, barked, and whispered in recent months, there are still some Americans out there who think President Reagan is in charge. Not only do they see him snapping his imperialistic whip over the heads of the multinationals, they also see him stirring up popular ardor for imminent military interventions, and for the deployment of SDI. Most of all, they credit him with manipulating the mass media, especially television, for his own purposes. And they’re not just talking about quips at press conferences. These folks see the president slipping subliminal pro-Star Wars messages into the interstices of automobile commercials. Just look at the latest high-tech sports-car ads, those mirror-bright fenders blurring into accelerated streaks of pure light! Don’t they remind you of lasers? No wonder we’re putty in the Great Communicator’s hands.

The White House may well ask: Who are these true believers? They are the contributors to Watching Television, one of two inaugural volumes in a new series of books subtitled “A Pantheon Guide to Popular Culture.”¹ Watching Television is compiled by Todd Gitlin, an associate professor of sociology and director of the mass-communications program at the University of California at Berkeley. Now that he has finished assembling this volume, Mr. Gitlin is proceeding with a new book about his true passion: the faded glories of the New Left. Back in 1970, he co-authored Uptown: Poor Whites in Chicago, a participant-observer study (with