Hey Millennials? Its Been Done Before.

Try this on your brain and see if it sounds familiar:

Above all, these newcomers had an intuitive understanding of the [redacted] and the [redacted] system, its need for copy, the appetite of its changing members for headline-making novelties. Their [redacted] broke gracefully away from the prose of the old-pol handout – they were readable. And the newcomers were on to a good thing: the party pros needed a candidate to match [insert name here] in the peace appeal, and their candidate [insert name here] would have to be supported by [redacted].

How would you fill in the blanks?

Generally, I’ve left enough there for you to know this is about a political process. I had to excise names and a few other tells. But tell me, dear reader, how would you fill this in?

Maybe like this:

Above all, these newcomers had an intuitive understanding of the internet and the social media system, its need for copy, the appetite of its changing members for headline-making novelties. Their posts broke gracefully away from the prose of the old-pol handout – they were readable. And the newcomers were on to a good thing: the party pros needed a candidate to match [insert name here] in the peace appeal, and their candidate [insert name here] would have to be supported by [redacted].

I didn’t fill in all the blanks, but admit it: This paragraph makes perfect sense with the internet put in as the medium.

But since I’ve got that smug look on my face, you know this ain’t the internet.

Here’s the paragraph, as it appears in real life:

Above all, these newcomers had an intuitive understanding of the press and the news system, its need for copy, the appetite of its changing members for headline-making novelties. Their press releases broke gracefully away from the prose of the old-pol handout – they were readable. And the newcomers were on to a good thing: the party pros needed a candidate to match Eisenhower in the peace appeal, and their candidate Stevenson, Governor of Illinois, would have to be supported by Dick Daley, boss of the Cook County Machine. (Taken from “Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon,” by Theodore White.)

The “press” and “news system” spoken of here is television, and here author Ted White is talking about its disruptive influence at the 1952 conventions of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Back in 1951, television began its disruptive run, as White describes:

One year before the convention opened, an event had exploded in American life comparable in impact to the driving of the Golden Spike which, in 1869, tied America by one railway net from coast to coast. In September of 1951, engineers and succeeded in splicing together by microwave relay and coaxial cable a national television network; and two months later, late on a Sunday afternoon, November 18^th, 1951, Edward R. Murrow, sitting in a swivel chair in CBS Studio 41, had swung about, back to audience, and invited his handful of viewers (3,000,000 of them) to look. There before him were two television monitors, one showing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the other showing the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. The cameras flickered again – there was the Statue of Liberty in New York and Telegraph Hill ion San Francisco. Both at the same time. Live. The nation was collected as one, seeing itself in a new mirror, on a twelve-inch television tube. Murrow then swiveled back to the audience and lifted his dark eyebrows in amusement, as if he were a magician performing a trick.

Yes, the internet is peachy keen.

But its disruptive influence has been seen before.

The 21,000,000-strong audience that watched the conventions in 1952 saw the death of machine politics – though party politics still tries to play on behind closed doors today, viz the Democratic National Committee’s shyness of debates as they attempt to crown Hillary Clinton as their candidate over the insurgent Bernie Sanders. But then, unlike now, the politicians weren’t used to public scrutiny. They could get away with their machinations because few knew about them. Today, they get away with them because few care and most assume the system is rigged.

The internet is wonderfully disruptive. But, just like television, wonderfully distractive. Newton Minow saw it best.