Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Fine Print World

September 10th, 2010 by John Feehery

We live in a fine print world.

The devil is in the details, as the saying goes, and boy, the devil is having a field day these days.

You leave your phone on while you travel into a foreign country, and the next thing you know you are facing bankruptcy because of excessive roaming charges.  When you complain, hey, you should know better.  It’s in the fine print.

You pay a day late on your credit card; the bank slaps you with a huge late payment fee. When you complain, hey, you should know better.  It’s in the fine print.

You have to change your flight because of a family emergency, but the airline makes you pay through the nose for privilege.  When you complain, hey, you should have known better.  It’s in the fine print.

You use a social networking site for fun, and all of sudden, you get deluged with all kinds of crazy advertisers.  When you complain, hey, you should have known better.  It’s in the fine print.

Listen Up

May 25th, 2010 by John Feehery

A little more than a year ago, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor came up with what I thought was a smart idea.  He convinced a group of distinguished Republicans, including Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, that the GOP needed to spend some time listening to the voters to find out what they wanted from their government.

He founded the National Council for a New America with that express purpose.  Why don’t we just listen for a change?

For his efforts, Cantor was widely disparaged.  The left hit him with spurious ethics charges because he used official resources to listen to the American people.  The right, including luminaries like Rush Limbaugh and Tony Perkins, huffed that Cantor and his ilk lacked principle because they didn’t know what they stood for.

It was a ridiculous spectacle, because if there ever was a party that needed to step back and actually listen to the people, it was the Republican Party in the aftermath of the 2008 election.