For the past several centuries the bonding power of the family dinner table has been one of the few constants, and now it's binding no more. The potency of the media is now stronger than that of the family. The wonder is that families still exist at all, since the forces of modern life mainly all pull people away from a family centered way of life.

Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond (ed. Simon and Schuster, 2010) - ISBN: 9781439127599