OK, I can realte to the metaphorical title much more than White Lego, but for me, there's just one area that I'm struggling to fully appreciate,

Tito: "Sometimes he watched the news in Russian, on the Russian Network of America, on his Sony plasma screen. The voices of the presenters had begun to aquire a dreamlike, submarine quality. He wondered if this is what it felt like, to begin to lose a language."

Is Tito losing his grip on his old language, slipping into an American-ised version of the Russian tongue, or does this relate to the way in which the American network presenters are acting the news?

My interpretation of this is that it doesn't have that much to do with the presenters being from the "Russian Network of America", but that it is Tito slowing losing his grip on his old language.

Due to his lack of active daily use of Russian, listening to broadcast Russian begins to be dreamlike as something he remembers rather than something he is actively using. The sounds are familiar but no longer are directly firing his neurons as useful information. Either he needs to think about what is being said or he gets the dreamlike feeling. And this is why he wonders what it feels like to begin to lose a language. Russian is no longer coming naturally to him.

Da da da da,da da... FashPo to the rescue (again).

Those was my initial thoughts but there was this niggling RE when I watch Fox News the presenters seem to almost act out the stories, more like Opra than the BBC! Their style is almost non-literal English and that has the effect of sending me into a dreamlike trance, just watching the pics and hearing something that resembles the Queens language.

could be, been a while since I've seen American TV...

I only watch the news channels for hurricane footage in the hope that they'll trck up to us from Mexico, creating a tail end whip swell.

Your post reminds me of a debate in the current Iraq thread and led me to consider the fact that losing one's language as part of post 9/11 America, which isn't what Gibson was likely getting at, but still....