Commentary: Do we value spectacle over substance? Dennis Patrick Slattery, For the Express-News July 14, 2021 FacebookTwitterEmail Television is not only society’s primary form of mass communication, it is the source from which a large segment receives not just news but what they consider reality.San Francisco Chronicle file photo When we take a well-earned break from the onslaught of news that bombards us daily, we might wonder, as we should, how fantasies of reality have gained such strength and support in these past years and seem to coagulate today with greater concentration. I returned to a book I had read in 2012, published in 2009 by a foreign correspondent of 20 years and a New York Times writer for 15 years, Chris Hedges: “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.” His cultural diagnoses have become more prescient and more ubiquitous with time.