{"id":35629,"date":"2019-02-24T00:02:04","date_gmt":"2019-02-24T00:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35629"},"modified":"2019-02-24T00:02:04","modified_gmt":"2019-02-24T00:02:04","slug":"you-never-can-take-it-all-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35629","title":{"rendered":"You never can take it &#8216;all back&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/social-media.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-35631\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/social-media-300x270.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"270\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/social-media-300x270.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/social-media.jpg 474w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Social media have their good points . . . I suppose.<\/p>\n<p>However, I consider it to be a mostly negative influence on our national mood, not to mention the quality of our political discourse.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the medium &#8212; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google . . .\u00a0 whatever &#8212; social media has become the wave of the <em>present<\/em>, never mind the future.<\/p>\n<p>I want to look briefly at Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>Entertainment and sports celebrities, and politicians fire these messages out via Twitter. Occasionally they regret them immediately. Given the nature of Twitter, though, an &#8220;immediate&#8221; retraction isn&#8217;t quick enough. Whatever it is these folks say via Twitter goes out in a serious nano-second jiffy. Boom! Gone! Just like that!<\/p>\n<p>I laugh out loud when I read how those celebrities and pols take down their comments immediately. I want to yell:<\/p>\n<p><em>Too late, sucker! It&#8217;s out there! You lose!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Do you remember when Donald Trump fired off that tweet that concluded with that non-word, <em>&#8220;covfefe&#8221;?<\/em> The White House took it back, except that it&#8217;s still the subject of comedians&#8217; punchlines.<\/p>\n<p>The late Claude Duncan was a dear friend and colleague, as well as a brilliant writer and thinker. He once told me that you &#8220;cannot unhonk the horn.&#8221; He didn&#8217;t envision social media when he offered me that bit of wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>However, that statement never has been truer than it has become since the arrival of social media.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps that explains why the president of the United States &#8212; the unofficial Twitter Maven in Chief &#8212; never takes anything back. The most outrageous statements that flew into cyberspace from his Twitter account remain out there. They are uncorrected. He doesn&#8217;t pull &#8217;em back. He says these things and, well . . . that&#8217;s it! Take it or leave it!<\/p>\n<p>That doesn&#8217;t excuse the president&#8217;s bizarre use of that social medium to get his message out there. However, I suppose his reluctance to take anything back is a harsh realization that what flies out there is, um, out there <em>for keeps.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Social media have their good points . . . I suppose. However, I consider it to be a mostly negative influence on our national mood, not to mention the quality of our political discourse. Whatever the medium &#8212; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google . . .\u00a0 whatever &#8212; social media has become the wave of the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35629\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">You never can take it &#8216;all back&#8217;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1424,4300,4932],"class_list":["post-35629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35632,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35629\/revisions\/35632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}