Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate – George Lakoff
Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate – George Lakoff, Chelsea Green Publishing Company (2004) 124pp. (S) ***
Why has the right as of late, been so successful at the polls? According to George Lakoff, the answer lies in the left’s inability or unwillingness to adequately “frame” its ideas (i.e. provide its arguments with a linguistic context). If you ask Lakoff, facts and truth are all well and good, but absent a “frame” by which to present them in, are pretty much meaningless. In other words, it is only through frames that people are able to relate to unfamiliar ideas.
Of course, in political contexts, it is the media that is most responsible for “framing the debate.” Politicians can enforce strict discipline for “keeping on message” which indeed can shape the debate, but in the end it is the corporate media that is the lens through which the broader public interprets events. The examples are endless, but here is one for elaboration: the reader will recall the “Dean scream” which the media latched onto and within the period of a 24 hour news cycle, the media single-handedly sunk his campaign, by continuously rerunning the “scream” footage. Now if one compares the scream to George W. Bush’s notoriously poor oratory, it is quite plain to see that the candidate with the deeper pockets gets the pass from the media.
While Lakoff recognizes the massive Republican machine that since the Watergate era, has sunk billions into think tanks and media outlets, he fails to appreciate just how much weight this fact carries. That the left is consistently and thoroughly outspent, is no secret, yet goes a long way in explaining why a poorly informed public, prone to the exploits of propaganda, turns out in numbers to vote again and again against its own personal interests. Lakoff sees another aspect to this inequity: “But what has happened as budgets and taxes get cut is that the right is privatizing the left. The right is forcing the left to spend ever more private money on what the government should be supporting.”(p.29) So is there an end to this gross imbalance? Lakoff offers no answers. Reframing is all well and good, but if you don’t have the airwaves and the resources to get your message out, then framing is not the issue. Surprisingly, Lakoff only mentions Air America in passing. What Lakoff seems to fail to appreciate is that it is on the airwaves where the rubber meets the road. Reframing is fine as a personal virtue, and may make modest victories in one on one settings, but when you’re talking about millions of people, it is ludicrous to think that every voter will get a personal consultation.
Lastly, Lakoff fails to recognize that in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Al Gore won the popular vote by half a million votes. In the last presidential election in 2004, there is strong evidence that due to may electoral irregularities and coordinated Republican interference, the election was likely stolen. What can be concluded from these facts? A) The American populace is already much more progressive in spite of media attempts to mold it to the contrary and B) The greatest threat to American democracy are paperless electronic voting machines, which in most cases have manufacturers owned by persons on the right. Given these realities, the left should forget about “gay marriage” and other cultural “wedge issues” of the right and focus like a laser on the voting apparatus that threatens the most fundamental aspect to democracy: the right to a free and fair ballot.
Why has the right as of late, been so successful at the polls? According to George Lakoff, the answer lies in the left’s inability or unwillingness to adequately “frame” its ideas (i.e. provide its arguments with a linguistic context). If you ask Lakoff, facts and truth are all well and good, but absent a “frame” by which to present them in, are pretty much meaningless. In other words, it is only through frames that people are able to relate to unfamiliar ideas.
Of course, in political contexts, it is the media that is most responsible for “framing the debate.” Politicians can enforce strict discipline for “keeping on message” which indeed can shape the debate, but in the end it is the corporate media that is the lens through which the broader public interprets events. The examples are endless, but here is one for elaboration: the reader will recall the “Dean scream” which the media latched onto and within the period of a 24 hour news cycle, the media single-handedly sunk his campaign, by continuously rerunning the “scream” footage. Now if one compares the scream to George W. Bush’s notoriously poor oratory, it is quite plain to see that the candidate with the deeper pockets gets the pass from the media.
While Lakoff recognizes the massive Republican machine that since the Watergate era, has sunk billions into think tanks and media outlets, he fails to appreciate just how much weight this fact carries. That the left is consistently and thoroughly outspent, is no secret, yet goes a long way in explaining why a poorly informed public, prone to the exploits of propaganda, turns out in numbers to vote again and again against its own personal interests. Lakoff sees another aspect to this inequity: “But what has happened as budgets and taxes get cut is that the right is privatizing the left. The right is forcing the left to spend ever more private money on what the government should be supporting.”(p.29) So is there an end to this gross imbalance? Lakoff offers no answers. Reframing is all well and good, but if you don’t have the airwaves and the resources to get your message out, then framing is not the issue. Surprisingly, Lakoff only mentions Air America in passing. What Lakoff seems to fail to appreciate is that it is on the airwaves where the rubber meets the road. Reframing is fine as a personal virtue, and may make modest victories in one on one settings, but when you’re talking about millions of people, it is ludicrous to think that every voter will get a personal consultation.
Lastly, Lakoff fails to recognize that in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Al Gore won the popular vote by half a million votes. In the last presidential election in 2004, there is strong evidence that due to may electoral irregularities and coordinated Republican interference, the election was likely stolen. What can be concluded from these facts? A) The American populace is already much more progressive in spite of media attempts to mold it to the contrary and B) The greatest threat to American democracy are paperless electronic voting machines, which in most cases have manufacturers owned by persons on the right. Given these realities, the left should forget about “gay marriage” and other cultural “wedge issues” of the right and focus like a laser on the voting apparatus that threatens the most fundamental aspect to democracy: the right to a free and fair ballot.
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