Science & Tech Quote by Ivan Reitman

America’s media doesn’t have one moral code; it has two, and Reitman is poking at the hypocrisy with the bluntness of someone who’s watched the culture from inside the machine. His use of “schizophrenia” (a dated, loaded metaphor) is doing rhetorical work: it frames the contradiction as not just inconsistency but a split personality. On the surface, mainstream film and TV have long been policed for sex, profanity, and “decency,” even as violence gets a long leash. Reitman’s twist is that the real escalation isn’t only what’s on screen - it’s where the guardrails fall away.

The quote maps neatly onto the post-cable, post-Internet churn where public respectability becomes a performance and the “real” discourse migrates to spaces that feel private or consequence-free. “In private, on the Internet” isn’t just a list; it’s an accusation that anonymity and distance turn people bolder, crueler, more confessional, more pornographic - sometimes all at once. Then he lands the punch: “public-affairs shows or talk radio.” Those are supposed to be the grown-up rooms. Instead, they’ve become arenas for outrage, coded bigotry, and theatrical certainty, rewarded by ratings.

Reitman’s intent isn’t to scold audiences for being corrupted by media violence; it’s to point out that we’ve been fighting yesterday’s censorship battles while the culture’s real explicitness has gone conversational. The subtext is institutional: the gatekeepers are still editing the movie, while the public is saying the unsayable live, daily, and with a microphone.