Television did it. It remains an enormously powerful medium. It brings human beings — their eyes and faces and thought patterns and personal effects — into your very living room. It shakes up existing feelings. It floods the frontal cortex not with policy but with personality.
Whether I always agree with him or not does not prevent me from thinking that Andrew Sullivan is a fine writer and commentator. The above quote is contained in Nick Clegg catches the angry transatlantic wind (Sunday Times, 26 April 2010). Putting aside the political context of this media column I think this quote highlights the particular capacity of some media forms to reach deeply into the emotional centres of our brains.