being cross-examined or if they were lucky, 
applauded by McLuhan.

He was like the fastest gun in the west. People 
wanted to top his verbal repertoire, his wit, his 
turnaround of phrases, his verbal acrobatics, his 
command of literature. And so, he loved a good 
sparring partner who could keep about a 90-mile-
per-hour brain going up against his. He often 
flaunted his students into seeing their own 
pedantry or own conventional wisdom, their own 
mediocrity of thinking, and often he’d return 
papers saying “one idea” or “two ideas” at the 
top, with no other comment. In other words, he