Slowly, McLuhan’s notoriety began to fade, interrupted only by episodes such as his appearance in Woody Allen’s 1976 film Annie Hall , and the odd profile in People magazine. As the ’70s wore on, it became increasingly apparent that the apocalypse was no longer at hand. Feminism and the gay rights movement marched on, but society absorbed such changes without overthrowing its basic institutions. Students continued to go to classrooms, more or less, and men and women still went to work in offices. In many ways, McLuhan’s observations were vindicated—the truth of his remark, made in the early ’70s, that the image of a politician would be much more powerful than the politician himself, became fully evident in the ’80s. But the ’60s revolutions had passed, and so had
