October 8, 2025

Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not the battlefields of Vietnam.

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), Canadian communications scholar, Montreal Gazette, 16 May 1975, Jay p.243

From time to time, bad news connected with your office will come your way and you will not want to share it with the public for some reason or another. If the matter qualifies as genuinely confidential under any disclosure laws, so be it. If it doesn’t, be ready with a reasonable-sounding explanation when it comes out in the end…as it always does.

McLuhan was right about television and Vietnam. But social media (fueled by the audio and visual recording capabilities of, literally, everyone with a cellphone) is having just as telling an impact on every politician. Indeed, the smallest outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease rarely goes unnoticed anymore.