Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08872_Field_TCGG T637.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 894b | 16 lines

     found in the new force which he had discovered, that
     force which we today would call “the power of the press”.
     Aretino himself regarded it as the power of his pen. He
     himself did not realize the right Promethean fire with
     which he was playing. All he knew was that he had a
     tremendous instrument in his hands, and he employed it
     quite as unscrupulously as it, consistently, has been
     employed since his time. He was capable—see his
     Letters —of being quite as hypocritical as the press of
     today.

     Putnam goes on (p. 41) to mention that Aretino was
“perhaps the greatest blackmailer in all history, the first truly
modern exponent of the ‘poison pen’.” That is to say, Aretino
really regarded the printing press as a public confessional with
himself as Father Confessor, pen or microphone in hand.