Donald L. Heymann & Co.

Unlike Petraeus, Eisenhower didn’t make his wife Mamie sew the ribbons everywhere. Maybe he figured, in his modest Ike jacket, that most people knew what he was up to – and who he was – without the dazzle.

...anything resembling objective information is difficult to find in the day-to-day media clutter, as people increasingly choose partisan spinners with familiar viewpoints to read or view on their tablets, TVs and phones.

Metaphors may be a writer's best tool, primarily because they create vivid mental pictures, sometimes worth more than a thousand words. John McGhee's description of another writer's sharp sophistication was described this way: "His words wore spats."

I get smart quickly by asking good questions. People in general, and experts in particular, tend to have firm views on various subjects – including a limited set of words to discuss them – and these views haven’t been questioned in years.

Do you have trouble understanding what people are saying these days? And do you find people in business using vague words with little meaning, without mentioning real people, actions or thoughts?

As two leading academics put in a recent New York Times essay, “the desperate situation of many Americans (is) reduced to the clinical language of budgetary accounting.”

In a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, inspiring quotes from such leading lights as Henry David Thoreau and Nelson Mandela have also been proven to be frauds – or at least they've been simplified beyond recognition.

What are Abe’s lessons for today when most people have short attention spans, get bored easily, and don’t read very much or listen very well?

Don Heymann, a veteran writer, consultant and adjunct instructor at NYU, believes the public needs to be careful about overly dramatized and misleading political arguments if we are to make informed decisions about our future.

Donald Heymann, business writer and communications consultant has written his opinion regarding the Donald Trump machine and why he believes Mr. Trump does not understand the current trends in media messaging.