The one great pleasure about reading Herman and Chomsky's works is their scholarly approach. They reference copiously, thus empowering the reader to go deeper into the subject. I've listened to idiots rebuff Manufacturing Consent by suggesting it's one big conspiracy theory. Having read this book, I can, with certainty, conclude that those people have either never opened the book, or they held it upside down when they read it. What's patent about these writers' works is the growing gap between the intellectually rich and the rest of the population (the "sheeple"). You have incisive analysts who can tell the wheat from the chaff, and then there's the majority, who are busy watching football and studying the President's sexual habits. But, when you read manufacturing consent, you find out that this disparity is an output desired by those who govern, for it makes their job easier. In other words, they've introduced a new definition of democracy that says it's a system where a mighty few run the show and the rest are spectators.