Mike Gundy has strong thoughts about Twitter, says it's 'destroying this country'

"Coach, we got a lot of letters at the paper last week saying you oughtn't run the Single Wing so much. How do you respond?"

 

There is no President Donald Trump without Twitter. It was his amniotic fluid.

 

Yeah, that doesn't happen.

No reporter gives a shit about letters to the editor. Reporters and talk show hosts and sportscenter anchors are obsessed with twitter.
All of them are navel gazing.

 

Van Gundy mentioned "politics" without saying the T word.

 

They did in 1930.

Reporters always find ways to tell coaches what the fans are complaining about.

Nothing new.

 

I agree with this. But the way the question was framed was more along the lines of "criticism outside the program." Gundy asked where it came from. Someone said Twitter. He didn't give a rat's ass.

If someone had said "Eskimo Joe's" I don't know why Gundy would have given more of a rat's ass. If I were him, I certainly wouldn't.

The point I'm making is that the media legitimizes Twitter. And, in the case of Trump - I'm *not* trying to make a political point here - one has to take it seriously. It's the President's preferred form of...communication.

But Schmucky McGoo on a Twitter account isn't more legitimate than Schmucky McGoo in the end zone seats. It's Schmucky McGoo either way.

And, as crude as Gundy said it, he's generally not wrong about Twitter. Further, it shapes media perspective in a bad way - including in sports. It's absolutely:

A. A subtle pressure to say something because, hey, branding!, or millennial national reporter without a filter or apparently a boss said something.

B. A less unsubtle pressure to adhere to liberal groupthink because, hey, millennial national reporter said something, and they're a national reporter, so, well...

 

For Kennedy it was television.

For Roosevelt, radio.

Lincoln wouldn't have become president if Greeley hadn't decided to push the Cooper Union speech out to every paper in America.

There's always a technology for politicians to use.

 

Fireside chats vs. "horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer"

 

Letters to the editor are also, well, edited.

And the ones calling a woman horseface aren't published. And never were. Not even in 1930.

 

The technology in this case is spectacularly well-suited to fomenting rage.
I would argue Obama won the '08 presidency via the sheer might of the internet.
Trump's tweets in 2012-13 were getting the same reception as the star of Blossom.

 

As a listener of many podcasts like Poindexter, I am immediately turned off when discussion surrounds what some guy tweeted the other day.
But even worse is being at a table with actual people, in an actual social setting, and the conversation turning to what some jackass belched forth on Twitter.
Look at the asinine Daniel Craig papoose controversy. That doesn't happen without Twitter, sorry.

 

K. Move along then while those among us oblivious to history chat about it.