Your Mother Should Know

The comedian George Carlin liked to quip, “Business ethics is an oxymoron.” 

While most people on the receiving end of commerce would likely agree, having spent over forty years inside various businesses, I would rephrase Carlin's gag: Business ethics may not be an oxymoron, but it sure is an oddity.

It's as odd in the workplace as frontal nudity, purple hair and Hitler mustaches. 

Most business executives are decent folks who—to my view, anyway—conveniently "park their ethics at the door" along with their BMWs. Their workweek amorality doesn't make of them monsters or mobsters, but it does lend credence to Balzac's claim, "Behind every great fortune is a crime;" or a misdemeanor, at the least.

You'd think they would have learned right from wrong from their mothers.

Thank heaven there's now a guidebook for the ethically-challenged executive—one perfectly timed for the current global crisis.

Crisis Ahead, by crisis-management expert Edward Segal, provides a 250-page map through the corporate crisis minefield. But Crisis Ahead seeks to do more than that: it seeks to convert business ethics from an oddity to a commodity.

Segal is the author of a previous how-to, Getting Your 15 Minutes of Fame and More!, a cookbook for ambitious executives hungry for glory. Crisis Ahead is, in a way, that earlier book's "evil twin," a checklist for amoral executives eager to avoid the press's attention, a possible pillorying, or—worse—a pink slip.

Whereas the majority of books on business ethics—written by philosophers for b-school professors—are as impractical as they are impenetrable, Crisis Ahead is daringly straightforward, simple and "strictly business."

Segal states in his introduction—which includes a late-breaking essay on the Covid-19 crisis—that Crisis Ahead comprises only "quick, practical advice." The author's tips are aimed not at the academic, but at the business executive who needs to "prepare for, prevent, manage, and recover from a crisis, scandal, disaster, or other emergency." 

In other words, you'll find no theories, models or conundrums here. Crisis Ahead instead offers a bagful of "lessons learned" from illicit schemes, inside deals, sex scandals, errant emails and shoddy products, as well as no fewer than "101 best practices" intended for the beleaguered executive who needs to know "what to do in the moment: what levers to pull and what moves to make in real time when faced with a crisis." 

You also won't find terms like "environmental justice" or "social entrepreneurship" anywhere in the text; nor the names of philosophers, psychologists or theologians in the index.

So why consider Crisis Now a book on ethics? (Amazon—no paragon of the topic—has done just that, listing the book under both public relations and business ethics; but we'll set that aside for now.) 

The reason becomes clear when you read "Edward's Takes," brief sidebars by the author that accompany each case study. While these reflections consider "how well or poorly the company, organization, or individual did in responding to—or in some cases creating—a crisis," the vast majority also shine a light on the myriad misdeeds that led to the crises in the first place.

Time and again, we learn that executives themselves—not some error, accident, or act of God—bring about the catastrophes; that unscrupulous executives are indeed their own worse enemies.

You'd have thought they'd have learned better.

The Past isn't Dead. It isn't Even Past.

Ideas that Germans call Schnapsideen are those so stupid, you must have been drunk when you conceived them.

What kind of schnapps-idea is this? a German might ask. 

Urban Outfitters' Vintage Kent State University Sweatshirt is an example.

Whether a real offering or a PR ploy, the product was a Schnapsidee.

In 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired on anti-war student protesters at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine.

When Urban Outfitters released its product, the members of the Twitterverse into Vergangenheitsbewältigung—the struggle to overcome the past—went ballistic.

The company quickly fired off a retraction:

Urban Outfitters sincerely apologizes for any offense our Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt may have caused. It was never our intention to allude to the tragic events that took place at Kent State in 1970 and we are extremely saddened that this item was perceived as such. The one-of-a-kind item was purchased as part of our sun-faded vintage collection. There is no blood on this shirt nor has this item been altered in any way. The red stains are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray. Again, we deeply regret that this item was perceived negatively and we have removed it immediately from our website to avoid further upset.

The lesson for marketers? 

Those who forget the past are condemned to recall.

Fish Story

Here's a story with a hook.

Skift reports SeaWorld's CEO, after denying his employees posed as animal rights activists to infiltrate PETA, has admitted to conducting a covert operation.

In a report to stockholders, Joel Manby acknowledged corporate spies were sent by SeaWorld "to maintain the safety and security of employees, customers and animals in the face of credible threats.”

But a PETA spokesperson says SeaWorld sent agents provocateurs to bait PETA's people.

“SeaWorld’s corporate espionage campaign tried to coerce kind people into setting SeaWorld on fire or draining its tanks, which would have hurt the animals, in an attempt to distract from its cruelty and keep PETA from exposing the miserable lives of the animals it imprisons,” Tracy Reiman said.

SeaWorld's spokespeople have clammed up, claiming further comment would disclose "confidential business information related to the company’s security practices."

SeaWorld has been angling to fix its damaged brand for three years, after the movie Blackfish sent park attendance reeling and put profits in the tank.

As a case study in floundering PR, this one's a keeper.

Abe Lincoln, Storyteller

"Humor is both a shield and a sword in politics," Ari Fleischer, press secretary to George W. Bush, recently told CNN.

"Humor is a shield because if people like you they will tend to give you the benefit of the doubt. It is a sword because one of the most effective ways to make fun of your opposition is humor as opposed to direct, frontal, mean-spirited attacks."

Among the presidents who wielded humor—including Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, FDR, Kennedy and Reagan—none did it more skillfully than Lincoln.

Lincoln considered himself a "retailer" of other people's puns, wisecracks, japes and yarns. He had a photographic memory for funny material, and spent hours studying humorists' books and essays.

Although quaint by 21st century standards, some of Lincoln's gags can still raise a chuckle.

Lincoln told a story of a man in the theatre who put his top hat on the seat next to him. A plus-size woman sat on it. ""Madam," he said, "I could have told you the hat wouldn't fit before you tried it on."

He told another story of a professional speaker's arrival in Springfield, Illinois. “What are your lectures about?” a city official asked the speaker. “They’re about the second coming,” the speaker said. “Don’t waste your time," the official said. "If the Lord’s seen Springfield once, He ain’t coming back."

He told yet another story of a drunk named Bill, who was so wasted, he passed out in the mud. When Bill came to, he went looking for a way to wash off the mud, and mistook another drunk leaning over a hitching post for a pump. When he pumped the man's arm up and down, the man puked all over him. Believing all was right, Bill found a saloon. A friend inside said, "Bill, what happened?" Bill said, "You should have seen me before I washed."

After one grueling speech, Lincoln said of the speaker, “He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met." He called the arguments of his opponent for president “as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death.”

Once after being called "two-faced," Lincoln said, “If I had two faces, why would I be wearing this one?”

When Nebraska's governor told Lincoln there was a river in his state named "Weeping Water." Lincoln said, "I suppose the Indians out there call it 'Minneboohoo,' since 'Laughing Water' is 'Minnahaha' in their language."

His contemporaries said Lincoln's real success as a comedian was due to a talent for mimicry. He could mimic voices, accents, gestures, postures and facial expressions perfectly.

Fellow attorney Henry Whitney said, "His stories may be literally retold, every word, period and comma, but the real humor perished with Lincoln."

Watch Daniel Day-Lewis perform as Abe Lincoln, Storyteller.

Government Communicators: Send Outreach into Orbit

Award-winning video producer Ann Ramsey contributed today's post. She is a senior producer at the US Department of Health & Human Services in Washington, DC.

Although traditionally a favorite of corporate communicators, the Satellite Media Tour (SMT) should be part of every government communicator's toolkit. 

SMTs make efficient use of time-starved spokespeople who want to reach multiple media markets. This winter, for example, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services held weekly SMTs throughout the Health Insurance Marketplace Open Enrollment period. The benefit? Without leaving Washington, busy officials reached broadcast journalists all over the country with continuing updates about healthcare enrollment.

Not every government communicator knows the ins and outs of the SMT, so here’s a rundown. While some agencies use PR firms for their SMTs, I will assume your agency has its own broadcast studio, or at least access to one. 

What is an SMT? An SMT is a series of video interviews featuring a spokesperson responding in front of a camera to the audio of each remote interviewer’s questions. The broadcaster remotely receives the sound and picture of the spokesperson, usually via satellite, for play-out in a live news program, or as a recorded media file for editing into a package for later broadcast. SMTs generally take one to four hours of the spokesperson’s time, and interviews are typically scheduled in 10-minute windows. If radio broadcasters are included, the interview series is referred to as an SMT/RMT.

Advantages. An SMT is an opportunity to tap broadcasters in order to introduce, or respond to, a newsworthy or time-sensitive topic. It allows for targeting of media markets, for direct interaction between the spokesperson and reporters, and for the opportunity to tailor the desired message to each market.

Must-haves. At minimum, you need an available spokesperson; a satellite-capable broadcast studio (look up: is there a dish on your building’s roof?); the manpower to pitch to the networks; and a modest budget to rent a block of satellite time.

Prep. First, send out a pitch notification (media alert) that includes your desired topic or announcement, the planned date of the SMT, the spokesperson’s bio, and any pertinent facts that can be used to leverage an interview. Target your top media markets, stations and networks, and work up a schedule of time-slots to fill. Most SMTs are aimed at some combination of TV news shows (morning, noon, evening) and/or radio drive-time shows. Contact local and network news divisions to pitch your SMT. Once your agency’s broadcast studio has a block of satellite-time arranged, notify all participating stations of the satellite coordinates and signal format details.

Pitching tips. Local TV/radio news divisions are busy places. Nonetheless, a government agency can appeal to them by offering the twin advantages of authority and topicality. That a national authority, such as the Secretary of a cabinet-level department, is available to speak directly to a reporter about a hot topic is attractive to a network, particularly a small, local affiliate. Furthermore, offering a local angle can be helpful, if you can tailor your statistics and examples to each media market. Once a news producer is interested in the interview, the concept and timing normally need to be cleared with a news director at the station. That’s why each time-slot may take a couple of phone calls or emails to confirm.

Day-of. Your agency’s broadcast studio will likely handle booking and supervision of the makeup artist, production crew and satellite link-up, as well as delivery of any non-live interviews to the network producers. You will be assigned a studio SMT producer and floor director to oversee the production. You will need to provide the studio talking points to be loaded into the teleprompter, so your spokesperson can refer to them during each interview. It’s smart to confirm that the studio team has all the information for each interview, including time-slot, the station’s network control room telephone number, producer name and number, interviewer name and number, IFB (“Interruptible Feed Back”) number (used by the studio to dial into each station), backup/engineer number, and delivery method (live or taped).

On-air tips. As a communications professional, you should coach and assist your spokesperson. Be aware that on-air time with the reporter will be short; perhaps just a few minutes. Often the final story is only 90 seconds long. So reporters need your spokesperson to make between one and three points concisely. You should be on site with the spokesperson during the SMT, and coordinate with the studio’s SMT producer and floor director. Let your spokesperson know the first name of each reporter (the reporter will be speaking directly into your spokesperson’s headset). For each interview, the IFB number for the remote station is phoned by the studio’s audio engineer to create a direct audio link between the interviewer and the spokesperson. If needed, this link can be interrupted by the studio SMT producer or floor director, in order to keep the spokesperson informed. (Think of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show listening to a fake mic in his ear and saying, “Wait… I’m being told…”). If any linkup is lost, or any station has to cancel or delay, the studio SMT producer will make on-the-fly changes to maximize the scheduled line-up.

Afterwards. Your agency broadcast studio will deliver any non-live media to stations that have requested taped versions for editing or later play-out. As desired, you may want to follow up with broadcasters for feedback and to confirm that post-delivery airing took place. You can also get a tape of your spokesperson’s on-air answers from your studio, for media training purposes or to keep as an archival record.

Trends. Downsizing in broadcast is having an impact. Today you may find the network news producer and interviewer are one and the same person. If something urgent takes place, the floor director or studio producer must use the IFB to reach the interviewer. Another new wrinkle is that the interviewer may want to do the interview remotely, and so, rather than dialing into a station’s IFB number, the studio dials directly to the interviewer’s own mobile phone. It can be tricky! Social media is also having an impact. You can research the Twitter handle of a given broadcast station, in order to follow and interact on social media before and during a given live interview. And it's now possible to create so-called “air-checks,” permanent internet links to selected news show segments that make them available in play-back to stakeholders after the fact.

Go Ahead, Back Up

As January's "Snowzilla" bore down on the Nation's Capital, the head of DC's Metro told The Washington Post it was wiser to shutter his incompetent agency during the storm than tread "a false floor that everybody knows is false.”

While candid, the exec's expression of foreboding " may not soothe the frustrations of stranded customers," The Post said.

It's easy for customers to blame failures of government on lack of drive (in fact, it's a hobby of mine).

But then you can't explain the shipwrecks of driven profiteers like Target, which last year lost $7 billion on its calamitous rollout of Target Canada.

Its also easy for customers to blame failures of government on "pointy-headed" government execs. 

But then you can't explain the blunders of smart CEOs like Carla Fiorina, who halved HP's stock value while she ran the company.

So what's to blame for systemic failures—both public and private?

As turnaround experts observe, it's leadership's refusal to abandon a strategy that simply doesn't work (like the one illustrated in this insightful video). 

Should You Ever Talk Turkey?

According to ex-"cast members," a terminated Disney employee is never told, "You're fired." 

The employee is told instead to "find your happiness elsewhere."

Certain subjects—tough ones like death, poverty, addiction, insanity, intolerance, financial risk and job loss—are magnets for euphemisms.

Grammarian Jane Strauss detests them.

"A euphemism is a lullaby, a sedative, a velvet glove enfolding reality’s iron fist," she says.

But euphemisms don't merely function as kindly cop-outs, Strauss says.

"A euphemism can transform a narcissist into a temperamental perfectionist, a bigot into a traditionalist, or an unhinged demagogue into a passionate idealist."

Ain't it the truth, ladies and gentlemen.

So should business communicators ever talk turkey?

To my way of thinking, 99% of the time.

Audiences prefer candor to cant. Even the targets prefer it.

And you need not be ruthless to be straightforward.

Harry Truman was once accused of giving his political foes hell.

"I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell."

PS: In case you're wondering, Native Americans coined the phrase "talking turkey."

All We are Saying

In a full-page ad this week in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, Burger King called for a one-day halt to the "burger wars" with its rival McDonald's.

The Whopper shop wants to "get the world talking" about the UN's annual International Day of Peace next month.

Wasting no time, McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook posted an 87-word "No thanks" on Facebook, spurring critics to call him a wet blanket.

Easterbrook might have replied with one word, "Nuts," like American General Anthony McAuliffe did at the Battle of the Bulge, and proved at least that his company values efficiency.

Branding gurus are unanimous about linking your brand with a cause: just do it. Want to shake down those activist do-gooder Millennials?  Wear "capitalism with a conscience" on your sleeve.

But Burger King's cheesy stunt, by sugarcoating a serious issue, shows why you should take gurus' advice with a grain of salt. 

Easterbrook's reaction, though sound, isn't savory, either.

The whole episode, in fact, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

All we are saying, is give peace a rest.

A Pen as Mighty as His Sword

In his masterful Mask of Command, the late military historian John Keegan makes the case that Ulysses Grant's dispatches were as much responsible for victory as his grasp of tactics and infamous determination.

General George Gordon Meade’s chief of staff Theodore Lyman once wrote, “There is one striking thing about Grant’s orders: no matter how hurriedly he may write them on the field, no one ever had the slightest doubt as to their meaning, or ever had to read them over a second time to understand them."

It was clarity, simplicity and directness that made Grant's dispatches so astonishingly effective.

Lyman said Grant's dispatches "inclined to be epigrammatic without his being aware of it,” chiefly because the general used “plain and unmistakably clear words.”

Three examples:

In February 1862, hunkered before Fort Donelson, Grant sent this note to Confederate General General S.B.Buckner:

Sir, Yours of this date, proposing armistice and appointment of commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.

In April 1864, while advancing on the Wilderness, Grant dispatched the following order to Meade:

Lee’s army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.

And after Spotsylvania, in May 1864, Grant sent the army's chief of staff, Henry Halleck, this note:

We have now ended the 6th day of very hard fighting. I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.

When your goal is clarity—to write so that your readers will understand exactly what you mean—write like Grant, with simplicity and directness. 

Clarity eliminates ambiguity and confusion, and makes reading effortless.

Lion One, Dentist Nothing

Will Minnesotans ever again want a torturer's hands in their mouths?

In an attempt at damage control, Big Bwana Walter Palmer, DDS, has emailed patients, crying for quarter.

In the three-paragraph email, Palmer confesses, "I don’t often talk about hunting with my patients because it can be a divisive and emotionally charged topic," but that "I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion."

Palmer acknowledges that protests and media coverage have ruffled his practice and concludes, "I apologize profoundly for this inconvenience and promise you that we will do our best to resume normal operations as soon as possible."

At the same time, Palmer has darkened his practice's Website and Facebook page.

Judging from his email. I think Palmer believes the hoopla is short lived, that our present obsession with a dead lion will soon revert to our customary obsession with cute kittens.

My guess: Big Bwana's got another thing coming!

A Lesson from LinkedIn

Cleveland headhunter Kelly Blazek made national headlines last week for flaming a jobseeker who contacted her through a LinkedIn group.

Blazek's victim didn't sit still for the abuse. She posted the headhunter's put-downs verbatim on several other Websites and they quickly went viral.

Blazek apologized for the breach of trust in a letter to The Plain Dealer. “In my harsh reply notes," she wrote, "I lost my perspective about how to help, and I also lost sight of kindness."

Blazek subsequently deleted all online traces of herself.

Ironically, only last year the headhunter was named "Communicator of the Year" by the Cleveland Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.

We all can benefit from the advice of Florence Hartley, author of The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, published in Boston in 1860:

"Never write a letter carelessly. It may be addressed to your most intimate friend, or your nearest relative, but you can never be sure that the eye for which it is intended, will be the only one that sees it. I do not mean by this, that the epistle should be in a formal, studied style, but that it must be correct in its grammatical construction, properly punctuated, with every word spelt according to rule. Even in the most familiar epistles, observe the proper rules for composition; you would not in conversing, even with your own family, use incorrect grammar, or impertinent language; therefore avoid saying upon paper what you would not say with your tongue."

Watch Your Language

The father of phrases like death tax (a.k.a. estate tax) and climate change (a.k.a. global warming), Republican strategist Frank Luntz employs focus groups to examine words’ emotional content.

His goal is to find words that will change people's visceral reactions to hot-button issues.

In a 2012 speech to the Washington State Chamber of Commerce, Luntz advised business executives to revise some of their pet phrases. He recommended they replace :

• Free enterprise with economic freedom; 
• Middle class with hardworking taxpayers; and 
• Business climate with healthy economy.

Luntz also recommended executives strike understand, accountable and important from their vocabularies, because listeners no longer have faith in these words.

You need not agree with Luntz's politics—I, for example, would replace his death tax with fairness reset and his climate change with planetary meltdown—to agree with his theory.

The emotional content of words makes them powerfully persuasive.

Novelist Joseph Conrad once wrote, "He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense."

Vintage Verbs: Gignate

Part 3 of a 5-part series on forgotten verbs

Gignate means to produce.

You might say, "Chad gignated 200 leads with his email."

Nowadays we honor the verb's Latin root, oriri, to begin, and only say originate.

In Defense of the Plain Style

Itinerant writer Robert Louis Stevenson, battling TB, wandered into a merchant’s stall in San Francisco one day in 1879. 

He bought a used copy of Some Fruits of Solitude, a collection of maxims published 176 years earlier by the American Quaker William Penn.

Stevenson later told a friend that he had “carried the book in my pocket all about the San Francisco streets, read it in streetcars and ferryboats when I was sick unto death, and found in all times and places a peaceful and sweet companion.”

Among the things Stevenson admired was Penn's defense of the “plain style” of writing.

The plain style was characterized by clarity and simplicity.

Plain-stylists like Penn believed affected writing was the product of vanity and served only to confuse people.

He hated especially the “laboring of slight matter with flourished turns of expression,” calling it “worse than the modern imitation of tapestry.”

Imagine how Penn would respond today to this crazy-quilt (quoted in full from the Home page of an IT firm):

_______ is an industry leader in the development of both Hosted and On Premise based call center solutions and predictive dialers for industry-specific applications ranging from financial services to home remodeling and other related companies that utilize the services of Predictive Dialing and Contact Center Management & Customer Interaction. We offer both premise based and hosted solutions to small to medium-sized inside sales organizations to larger call centers. Our goal is to provide a seamless cost- effective call center solution which involves the cohesive blend of computer telephony integration (CTI) applications, Web-centric applications, customer relationship management (CRM), agent interaction and other channels of communications such as Web call back, Web chat, email, fax and Web collaboration.

Huh?

Where Did We Get the Word "Slogan?"

Part 2 of a 5-part series on word histories

Slogan has a war-loving past.

The Irish word for army is sluagh.

In Irish, sluagh was combined with gairm, the word for shout, to mean war cry.

Sluaghgairm later appeared in Scottish English as slogorn.

By the 17th century, the word was spelled slogan and conveyed the meaning motto. 

In the early 20th century—around the time of World War I—slogan became synonymous with a company's or group's goal or position.

NOTE: Today's post, Number 300, is a milestone. It feels like one, anyway. Stay thirsty, my friends.

5 Scary Social Media Trends

Pity the corporation. In an obdurately unfriendly world, it has to maximize shareholder value.

A little thing like a broken guitar can bust millions in market cap. And batter a reputation as well.

Blame it on social media.

"Social media and the technology behind it—Web 2.0—has forever changed how corporations 'manage' reputation," writes Ogilvy PR's John H. Bell in Corporate Reputation in the "Social Age."

The danger, Bell says, lies in "the explosion of consumer-generated media found in more than 150 million blogs, social networks, consumer opinion sites, video and picture sharing networks, and worldwide message boards."

Five big trends affect how corporations manage their reputations today, Bell believes.

Hypertransparency. With 150 million active social media users, there are "thousands of forensic accountants, social watchdogs and activists watching your company," Bell writes.

Viral crises. When a crisis hits, the word spreads quickly, "often with the accompaniment of YouTube videos."

Demand for dialogue. One-way messaging—news releases, robotic spokesmen, TV ads and customer-service scripts—are out. Conversation is in.

Louder brand detractors and employees. Social media well arms the corporate critic. "It doesn’t take a Goliath to become a formidable adversary for a corporate brand," Bell says.

Uncontrollable brand fans. Even happy customers can blacken your name with their online antics. With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Marketers must be authentic and transparent, Bell says, because "conversation is competing and often winning as a communication channel online."

CBS Earns a Black Eye

The acerbic well of public trust has been further poisoned.

Last month, CBS executives ordered subsidiary CNET to pull a product from consideration for a "Best of CES" award at the Consumer Electronics Show.

CNET was under contract with the Consumer Electronics Association to judge the competition.

But the executives at CBS didn't like the fact that CNET wanted to give the award to "Hopper," a new product that lets Dish TV subscribers skip commercials. (CBS, in fact, has sued Dish to stop the sale of Hopper.)

“I can never recall any major media company, much less a top-tier First Amendment protector like CBS, publicly mandating an editorial decision based on business interests,” writes Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, in USA Today.

The decision has destroyed CBS' reputation overnight, Shapiro says.

"CBS, once called the Tiffany network, will never be viewed again as pristine," he writes.

The CBS executives have earned a spot on the Wall of Shame alongside Lance Armstrong, Kenneth Lay, Bernie Madoff and Jack Abramoff.

They've also made marketers' jobs a little harder by adding to the "trust deficit" and strengthening customers' skepticism.

To find an antidote, read my free white paper, Path of Persuasion.

Lincoln Would Have Loved Twitter

FCC chair and part-time historian Tom Wheeler wrote a cool book a few years ago titled Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War.

It attributes the North's victory over the South to Lincoln's embrace of the telegraph, the "killer app" of the 1860s.

Lincoln, as history shows, was a super-skilled telegraph user, while his Rebel foes were, well, late adopters. (They were also late adopters of civil rights, but that's another story.) 

Lincoln, Wheeler contends, took advantage of the real-time nature of the telegraph to direct the Yankees on the battlefield, enabling them to run circles around the Johnnies.

When Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails first hit the shelves, Twitter was only three months old, with hardly any users. But, had he foreseen its surge in popularity, I'm sure Wheeler would have agreed: Lincoln would have loved Twitter.

Of course, Lincoln couldn't have Tweeted top secret orders to his generals. But he could have used Twitter to rouse the troops who followed them.

It's easy to imagine some of the momentous microbursts that might have come from our most articulate president:

During the massive Union rout at First Bull Run. "Stop running! The Marine Corps Marathon is next week, you morons."  

After the Union triumph at Gettysburg. "Rebs in full retreat. Stay tuned. Speech to follow."

After Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox. "Mission accomplished. Ulysses, you're doing a heck of a job!"

Twote the Raven

Once upon a Debate Night dreary,
Appeared on phones a Tweet so eerie,
'Twas hard to think it really real.
Nonetheless, the missive's source,
Not knowing he was truly coarse,
Had pushed it out like some football score.
It revealed a strange alliance
(the GOP and a kitchen appliance) 
Which no one knew of heretofore;
Only this and nothing more.

His firm moved fast to hit delete,
But not before the tasteless Tweet
Had whirled about the Twittersphere. 
The guy was sacked without delay.
Now he's polishing his resume;
Wants work as a Social Media Connoisseur.
But a big bird's Tweet predicted his chances
Of a future job and steady advances
Are worse in fact than very poor:
Twote the Raven, "Nevermore."