Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An event that has been caused to occur or staged to engender press coverage and public interest.
Etymologies
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Examples
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So wrote the American historian Daniel Boorstin in his 1962 classic "The Image," which gave us the term "pseudo-event" along with the now-standard definition of a celebrity: "a person who is known for his well-knownness."
A Toast to Will and Kate Bret Stephens 2011
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Language Log, an outstanding linguistics blog, covered the pseudo-event in considerable detail.
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Regarding this Friday's wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, curmudgeons have said that here is the ultimate celebrity pseudo-event, a manufactured fairy tale from the politically powerless and morally deficient House of Windsor, the significance of which is not only inversely proportionate to the global attention it inspires, but also a gross distraction from everything that ails our troubled world.
A Toast to Will and Kate Bret Stephens 2011
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More Gadhafi Girds for Long Survival Battle Omar Musbah Omar, a 23-year-old jobless resident of Tarhouna, said the desert gathering was more than a media pseudo-event.
Libya Arms Civilians to Fight Insurgency Richard Boudreaux 2011
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When the last wars of American empire had already peaked, in Empire of Illusion Hedges gave us a gloss on Daniel Boorstin's mid-twentieth-century insight that politics has become media spectacle; Boorstin's pseudo-event is the only way for politics to advance.
Anis Shivani: Pessimism Porn Anis Shivani 2010
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But we are way past that mattering, because what Daniel Boorstin would call a "pseudo-event" has been unleashed in the public square, and along with it comes overhyped outrage and outright misleading nonsense: like the now-viral "shirtless boy strip-searched at airport" story that turned out to be gilded horsepoop.
Milbank: GOP Has Entered The 'Post-Post-9/11 Era' The Huffington Post News Team 2010
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But we are way past that mattering, because what Daniel Boorstin would call a "pseudo-event" has been unleashed in the public square, and along with it comes overhyped outrage and outright misleading nonsense: like the now-viral "shirtless boy strip-searched at airport" story that turned out to be gilded horsepoop.
Milbank: GOP Has Entered The 'Post-Post-9/11 Era' The Huffington Post News Team 2010
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Of course, the whole point of manufacturing a pseudo-event is to occlude important matters and block them out of the media coverage they deserve -- like, say, the pointless obstruction of the START treaty!
Milbank: GOP Has Entered The 'Post-Post-9/11 Era' The Huffington Post News Team 2010
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Of course, the whole point of manufacturing a pseudo-event is to occlude important matters and block them out of the media coverage they deserve -- like, say, the pointless obstruction of the START treaty!
Milbank: GOP Has Entered The 'Post-Post-9/11 Era' The Huffington Post News Team 2010
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When the last wars of American empire had already peaked, in Empire of Illusion Hedges gave us a gloss on Daniel Boorstin's mid-twentieth-century insight that politics has become media spectacle; Boorstin's pseudo-event is the only way for politics to advance.
Anis Shivani: Pessimism Porn Anis Shivani 2010
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