In 1990, in one of our many interviews, we had a brief discussion about the role and function of sports in American society, part of which was subsequently excerpted in Harper's. I've probably gotten more comments about that than anything else I've ever recorded. You really pushed some buttons.

I got some funny reactions, a lot of irate reactions, as if I were somehow taking people's fun away from them. I have nothing against sports. I like to watch a good basketball game and that sort of thing. On the other hand, we have to recognize that the mass hysteria about spectator sports plays a significant role.

First of all, spectator sports make people more passive, because you're not doing them -- you're watching somebody doing them. Secondly, they engender jingoist and chauvinist attitudes, sometimes to quite an extreme degree.

I saw something in the newspapers just a day or two ago about how high school teams are now so antagonistic and passionately committed to winning at all costs that they had to abandon the standard handshake before or after the game. These kids can't even do civil things like greeting one another because they're ready to kill one another.

It's spectator sports that engender those attitudes, particularly when they're designed to organize a community to be hysterically committed to their gladiators. That's very dangerous, and it has lots of deleterious effects.

I was reading something about the glories of the information superhighway not too long ago. I can't quote it exactly, but it was talking about how wonderful and empowering these new interactive technologies are going to be. Two basic examples were given.

For women, interactive technologies are going to offer highly improved methods of home shopping. So you'll be able to watch the tube and some model will appear with a product and you're supposed to think, God, I've got to have that. So you press a button and they deliver it to your door within a couple of hours. That's how interactive technology is supposed to liberate women.

For men, the example involved the Super Bowl. Every red-blooded American male is glued to it. Today, all they can do is watch it and cheer and drink beer, but the new interactive technology will let them actually participate in it. While the quarterback is in the huddle calling the next play, the people watching will be able to decide what the play should be.

If they think he should pass, or run, or punt, or whatever, they'll be able to punch that into their computer and their vote will be recorded. It won't have any effect on what the quarterback does, of course, but after the play the television channel will be able to put up the numbers -- 63% said he should have passed, 24% said he should have run, etc.

That's interactive technology for men. Now you're really participating in the world. Forget about all this business of deciding what ought to happen with health care -- now you're doing something really important.

This scenario for interactive technology reflects an understanding of the stupefying effect spectator sports have in making people passive, atomized, obedient nonparticipants -- nonquestioning, easily controlled and easily disciplined.

At the same time, athletes are lionized or -- in the case of Tonya Harding, say -- demonized.

If you can personalize events of the world -- whether it's Hillary Clinton or Tonya Harding -- you've succeeded in directing people away from what really matters and is important. The John F. Kennedy cult is a good example, with the effects it's had on the left.