There’s a new TV series I’ve watched a couple of times this fall, Fringe. The plot doesn’t grab me, but at every commercial break they tell me how long it will be: 30sec, 60sec, 90sec. Never more. It helps keep me around.
Short works. Americans today have the attention span of gnats. So if you want our attention, tell us how long it will take and make it short, or we’ll move on.
Here’s a video from an organization that is intended simply to tell us who they are. It works 1) because it’s short and 2) because the mission message is drilled into us repeatedly. It’s not only delightful and charming, it works because Less Is More. It’s the kind of thing you should be doing!
In the darkest days of 1968, after the murders of Martin and Bobby, as the Democratic party struggled to oppose the Vietnam War, the Democrats held their nominating convention in Chicago. There, in Grant Park, demonstrators assembled to voice their idealism, their hurt and their anger. Watched by millions on live television, many demonstrators were savagely beaten in what was later deemed a “police riot.” We all heard the chants, “The Whole World Is Watching.” In a sense, we were all beaten.
Forty years later our televisions returned us to Grant Park and again, the whole world was watching. Like so many others, I had been holding my breath against deep disappointment, hesitant to fully recommit to believing. It took forty years but Tuesday night we reclaimed the optimism and idealism that we had lost in 1968. As I watched the crowds then, and in later film clips taken around the world, we the people responded by dancing. It’s what human beings do when, in the joy of the spirit, we are moved beyond words. It seemed to me then, and in my heart it seems still, that now, the whole world is dancing.
If you’re not dancing yet, I hope you may soon join the dance.
Marc
Headlines: http://obama2008.s3.amazonaws.com/headlines.html
November 6th, 2008 in
Miscellaneous |
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