[x]

If the clerk was desensitized to the lyrics it probably had more to do with Muzak and top forty radio than with Heidegger and de Man. Information overload and desensitization were recognized long before deconstruction. From at least the beginning of radio and television broadcasting people have been shutting out messages aimed at them.

[cornelis]

You are right in part, of course. Desensitization comes in many forms, including information overload, including the purposeful aversion to perceive in the form of laughter, including the perpetuated parisian form of Apperzeptionsverweigerung, as well as other willfull hallucinatory inducements. Whether one comes before the other is the job of an particular historian to discover. However, the unwillingness and inability to acknowledge moral consistency is a particular disease associated with postmodernism for which there are unique factories (post-industrial factories if you like).