Pablum

(8.) General Idea, "Pablum for the Pablum Eaters," FILE 2, nos.

Of the Globe story, he called it "the typical uninformed pablum'' practiced by reporters who travel to Worcester only under the following conditions: 1.

choice pablum. It's as realistic as it can get on a computer version of a panel simulator--you are facing the panel and are directed to accomplish another series of tasks having to do with the segment--except that you are not given any prompts.

At best they are pablum. After all, even if Army leaders were interested in change (and many are), what could they possibly do?

The second looks at cultural contexts for American politics, including religious, sports-oriented, Facebook, and other pablum. The last section offers critical takes on black Republicans, the utility of transcendence, an aging political body, and poverty management.

There he essentially serves up pablum: more focus on diplomacy (to what end is left unclear); distancing ourselves here, while remaining engaged in some undefined way there; hoping a political process and negotiations would lead to a peaceful settlement of the Israel-Palestine problem; defending China's neighbors while reassuring China that their interests don't conflict with its own; and so on.

A more nuanced biography would have recognized the clues in the later newspaper accounts and dug deeper in an attempt to flesh out more fully the truth behind the pablum of the earlier stories.

Despite the level of anger, it was immediately clear that these were not philistines who were arguing for pablum or for a season of "easy listening"--they were engaged theatregoers who desperately wanted to understand what was going on at a theatre they had nurtured for years.

Here we are as popular critics, speaking to a bigger audience than anyone else in the art world--and to an audience with fewer preconceptions and a greater need for knowledge--and mostly what we give them is pablum. We reheat critical cliches that would fail a graduate student out of any decent art history program.

It was allegedly "non-sectarian." In reality, it was theological pablum, and many clergy recognized it as such.

This recoil from crowd-pleasing pablum continued through the sixties.

"I believe there are a lot of people like me who turn on the TV and feel as though they are just getting pablum and that they are really interested in something dynamic and engaging," he explains.