Politics & Power Quote by Paul Weyrich

There is a moral alarm bell baked into Weyrich's phrasing: television isn't merely popular, it's "dominant", a word that turns a household object into a governing force. The line works because it shifts the threat from content (a dirty joke, a violent scene) to structure. TV becomes an environment children live inside, not a program they occasionally watch. That framing neatly sidesteps debates about taste and goes straight to power: who is shaping attention, values, and time?

"Too many" is doing strategic work as well. It signals a problem big enough to warrant political action while avoiding the absolutism that invites easy rebuttal ("My kid watches a little and is fine"). It's a classic conservative rhetorical move: define a cultural condition as widespread but not universal, leaving room for the virtuous exception and the implied standard of proper parenting.

The subtext is less about screens than about authority. In Weyrich's worldview, mass media is an unelected institution that competes with family, church, and school for control of a child's imagination. By naming children specifically, he picks the softest target and the strongest lever: if the media "dominates" kids, then it is effectively colonizing the next generation before parents can transmit norms.

Context matters: Weyrich was a central architect of the modern Religious Right, arguing that politics must be paired with cultural counteroffensives. In the late 20th century, TV symbolized a new national priesthood beaming into private life, flattening local values into a standardized, commercialized culture. His complaint is less nostalgic than tactical: if television runs childhood, then it runs the country's future.