During our post-prandial reading last night, the hardworking staff came across this passage:

He put, aides noticed, more more concentration into watching the news than into almost anything else, you could watch with him but you could not talk. He felt that what went on these shows was terribly important. Perhaps it was not reality and perhaps it was not even good journalism, but it was what the country perceived as reality and thus in a way was closer to reality than reality itself.

Donald Trump, right?

Wrong.

That was David Halberstam’s description, in his 1979 magnum opus The Powers That Be, of Pres. John F. Kennedy, TV’s first political rock star and a man who 1) thoroughly understood the power of television in American society and 2) thoroughly stage-managed the coverage of his administration.

Plus ça change and etc., oui?