Ah, the best laid plans. Today’s post was originally going to be about some exciting new business we have here at Big. But the confidentiality needs of our client prevent us from making any announcements just yet. Which, frankly, is a refreshing change of pace. Because notions like confidentiality, privacy, and discretion feel increasingly quaint these days, like the antiquated values of a bygone era, as more and more business people twitter, facebook, and blog their every move throughout the day.

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Whippersnappers and curmudgeons. That’s the dialectic this week, it seems, in regard to media. Then again, that’s always the dialectic. New media versus old media is…well…old news. But when the fight gets nasty, or the casualties start to pile up, it’s time to take notice again.

Setting the tone, if not actually fulfilling the technical definitions, is the continuing feud between John Stewart and CNBC (and financial news in general). Now, this is an intra-TV battle, with both combatants part of the same old-media stalwart, but Stewart’s hipness quotient and youthful following, together with the calling-out-the-emperor quality of his attack, give his side a new media vibe. And the dismissive, arrogant umbrage of NBC Universal’s Chief Executive Jeff Zucker certainly smacks of out-of-touch, old-style, ivory-tower entitlement.

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“Feeling good, feeling good, all the money in the world spent on feeling good.” It’s been half a century since blues artist J.B. Lenoir recorded those words, but it’s certainly just as true today. In fact, it’s pretty trenchant economic analysis—moreso than any of the expert commentary I hear on the financial news networks, anyway. For one thing, it helps explain some of the counter- and a-cyclical spending we hear about, the goods and services that still get purchased, despite tightening purse strings. I’ve always heard, for instance, that candy bars continue to sell well in tough economic times. Of course, candy bars aren’t exactly a luxury item, price-wise, but when people are cutting all kinds of things out of their budget, big and small, why leave candy bars on the ledger? Well, as Mr. Lenoir might point out, they feel good; eating a candy bar is a quick little burst of pleasure. It’s a tiny reward, you might say, that feels deserved amidst other sacrifices. In other words, it’s comfort food.

Of course, comfort food needn’t be something you eat, in the Lenoirian scheme. Anything that makes you feel good, that makes you feel better in the midst of adversity, is comfort food in this ameliorative sense. And, in principle, I’m all for it (one look at my  mid-section is evidence of that; they don’t call me “big guy” because I work at Big). Still, it can be a little alarming when you look at precisely what Americans find comforting.

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The question can no longer be deferred, avoided, postponed. The big question. The defining question. In ages past, the dilemma may have been more existential, more ethical, as iconically expressed by the Prince of Denmark in Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquy. But twenty-first-century man and woman have a zeitgeist query of equal consequence, a historically unprecedented soul-searching question to ask of themselves: to tweet or not to tweet.

Yes, it’s gotten that big. Twitter made the leap from net-geek cogniscenti to hoi polloi some time ago, of course, and from there to brands and businesses. But here lately, it’s like you can’t squeeze your way through the inter-tubes without bumping your elbows or scraping your knees against yet another Twitter client or Twitter blog analysis or—most frightening of all—another marketing consultant hawking his or her expert wares on how best to build your brand 140 characters (or less) at a time.

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