You've raised some good points. I would submit that the fundamental problem you've described in anecdotal terms is the desire of the modern world to deny God.
The college graduates who gravitate to communications arts realize that there is a lot of money to be made in the movie and TV business. And these students are probably the kind of kids who come from wealthy families. If you never had to work in your life, what else could you do for a living? Be an attorney?
But the mention of MacLuhan is important. Greater minds than MacLuhan have identified the societal problems that result from the lack of a proper educational foundation in philosophy and theology that directs the student to an appreciation of God Almighty. This has been the root of all problems in the modern world since the "Enlightenment". It can be summarized as the attempt of Man to become God. All of the evils of the modern world are a result of this human vanity.
MacLuhan's insight of "the Medium is the Message" was a description of how modern mass communications distorts our perception of reality. The explanation of this phenomenon was actually developed to a greater degree by Heidegger, who outlined in detail the metaphysical nature of human interaction with communication instrumentalities, such as radio. Heidegger showed how our relationship with reality, or the nature of being, is distorted when our minds encounter the time and space irregularities of hearing (or seeing) events that occur over our normal spatial horizon. This interaction subverts our ability to follow a sequence of events in a coherent and logical manner.
If you have not enjoyed a Scholastic education, with its emphasis on the rules of logic or knowledge of God, then you are easy prey for the deceptions of mendacious propagandizers. These college kids are easy marks, but they have nothing to say. They have no intellectual foundation of substance to draw from when participating in the propaganda machine. They simply regurgitate platitudes and bromides.
This problem also surfaces when we see our children interact with the Internet. The amount of factual information that is available to kids in easily accessible databases is unbelievable. But because of a lack of a strong educational foundation, they have lost the ability to discriminate between the worthless and the valuable. The hypertext environment of the Internet jerks them around from one input to another in a discordant manner. They all appear to have attention deficit disorder.
It seems to me the fact that Noonan doesn't know this is further evidence of the failure of our educational system. She is a Catholic, as was MacLuhan and Heidegger. She should know better.
This is also (of all people) Nietzsche's insight in Die Froeliches Wissenschaft [The Gay Science in the famous Aphorism 125 concerning the death of God -- that the people mocking the madman (tollen mensch, a bit more nuanced in german) have themselves killed God, the greatest of all man's creations, but, though the deed has been done, it is as yet 'far off' and they don't realize what they have done. Nietzsche's athiesm (i.e., his view that man created God), this is remarkably perceptive -even to the notion that God is the noblest thing man can concieve- and thought-provoking. I have pondered on this aphorism often.
I disagree that the problem is the Enlightenment, but then my education was not scholastic, but rather in intellectual history and philosophy, and I regard the Enlightenment and its (primarily British) precursors to be the foundation of the philosophical basis which undergirds our republic. The difficulty, of course, is that Faith is not automatic for the mind that embraces the Englightenment. I would argue at length on a suitable occasion that the problem is most people's disinclination to think as hard as serious understanding of the Enligntenment (or Nietzsche, for that matter) requires, than the ideas of the Enlightenment itself.
Recall, that the position of the Church through the 18th and 19th centuries (and until recently in many ways) was ultramontane and fundamentally hostile to individual liberty as well as to classical liberalism and capitalism. A world in which the Englightenment was rejected to return (to paraphrase a line from Georges Hazard's Crise de la Consicence European [The Crisis of the European Mind]) to the world of a Bossuet, is one that would be on the road to medievealism similar to that which has mired islam.
Hey man, that was a beautiful post.
On a number of your other points we agree:
surely, the lack of serious educational grounding in logic, theology (and I would add, philosophy and history) make it difficult for anyone to seriously and rigorously think or evaluate the mass of facts available.
I have often noticed, and been disturbed by the phenomenon you note with respect to children (youth, even adults) unable to evaluate the wealth of information available on the internet. With my own children, I have stressed the importance of determining the quality of sources, and checking any information found on the internet against print sources of high reliabilty wherever possible. This is especially true in matters historical, which are near to my heart and interest.