[erlayman]

That’s because the Kennedy Administration’s Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow had decried television as a “vast wasteland” in a 1961 speech.

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He wouldn’t have had a chance in hell of getting elected without it — and Kennedy was the first to acknowledge that.

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Minow had been a Stevenson man in the 50s, so it's not surprising he was down on popular culture: Stevenson's people thought he was too intelligent to be elected (yet they kept running him for president over and over again).

Newton Minow is still around, and he and his kids have ties to Obama. He may be one of the last of those characters who seemed to hover around the White House decade after decade whenever a Democrat was there.