At the beginning of the 21st century, America is, more than ever, a culture of exhibitionism that also claims to be a culture concerned about privacy. Citizens cheerfully watch Big Brother TV, or set up Web cams in their bedrooms, even as they tell pollsters that privacy is one of the most important political issues facing the country today. The impulses toward exposure and concealment conflict with each other, obviously, but they also complement each other. "People worry about, and debate, ways to protect and preserve zones of intimacy and seclusion in a world with satellite eyes," as the legal historian Lawrence Friedman has observed. That debate--which often amounts to an alarmist muddle--has become a defining feature of life in what Friedman has called a horizontal society, in which identity is peculiarly open and authority is increasingly based on celebrity rather than on traditional notions of hierarchy.

In a horizontal society, being famous is a surer way of achieving status and authority than conforming to preordained social roles, and therefore the distinction between fame and infamy is elusive. Getting on television is itself a form of authority, regardless of whether one is there for behaving well or behaving badly. Those who exercise power in a horizontal society become celebrities, and celebrities, unlike the powerful in traditional societies, must surrender a great deal of their privacy. They must convey the impression of being accessible and familiar rather than remote and daunting, and they achieve this illusion by their willingness to share certain intimate details of their personal lives with faceless cameras. 

To continue reading, please click Download PDF, above.