Mark Twain once said that everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it.  In some ways you could say the same thing about television.  Critics have been assailing the “vast wasteland” for decades but have done little to reduce television’s dominant role in contemporary culture.  Studies show that Americans now watch more television than ever, and it’s hard to go anywhere – airports, neighborhood restaurants, even the dentist’s office – without a TV set greeting you as a square-faced, glowing companion. Primetime Propaganda by Ben Shapiro is the latest book to critique television, although he does not attack the quality of TV since he thinks most programs are pretty good.  Shapiro’s beef is that television programming intentionally supports liberal politics and lifestyles.  Primetime Propaganda is designed to explain how this happened and find ways to make TV entertainment more ideologically diverse. Shapiro has clearly marshaled an impressive amount of evidence in support of his thesis.  He traces the history of the major TV networks from their inception to the present day, and his chronicle is chock full of names, dates, and program descriptions from all of television’s well-known eras.  Fateful decisions that changed the course of

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