Now the flip side of that is that he almost had a 
compulsion to see order and to make patterns, to 
see patterns and sometimes to impose patterns. 
So that every fad that came along—if you told 
McLuhan, “Gee, there are a lot of Westerns on 
television,” or “ Gee, the women really like these 
mesh stockings now,” or today for example, “Gee, 
the kids are wearing these big baggy pants and 
they love basketball and they love the big air 
shoes,” McLuhan would have a theory for that. 
He’d say “Oh yes, yes,” and he’d think about that 
for a while and come out with a theory. You read 
now some of his musings and you think—well, the 
first example I cited, about the Westerns on