The Phantom Public is a book published in 1925 by journalist Walter Lippmann, in which he expresses his lack of faith in the democratic system, arguing that the public exists merely as an illusion, myth, and inevitably a phantom. As Carl Bybee wrote, “For Lippmann the public was a theoretical fiction and government was primarily an administrative problem to be solved as efficiently as possible, so that people could get on with their own individualistic pursuits” (48).
Read more about The Phantom Public: Context, Lippmann's Argument in The Phantom Public
Famous quotes containing the words phantom and/or public:
“King Kong, Count Dracula, and the Phantom of the Opera are just looking for love, like the rest of us.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The man who would change the name of Arkansas is the original, iron-jawed, brass-mouthed, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of the Ozarks! He is the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the smallpox on his mother’s side!”
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)