Context: George Lakoff is a UC-Berkeley linguist who has become the new guru of liberals who want to reframe the national debate. Via his book and the think tank he helped start, Lakoff argues for mechanically re-framing each issue from a liberal perspective, an approach we criticize in All the President's Spin as another destructive step in the escalating spin war.
Here's a new post on the wildly popular Daily Kos weblog about the new New York Times/CBS poll that shows what's wrong with this approach:
One of the striking things about that poll was this:
Still, in a telling contrast with the 2000 election, 82 percent of respondents said that Mr. Bush legitimately won on Nov. 2. Just before Election Day, 50 percent of respondents said they considered Mr. Bush's defeat of Al Gore in 2000 a legitimate victory.That's quite a shift. In terms of Lakoff framing, or reality, or whatever you wish to call it, it makes sense to understand that on the one hand, the election is over in most people's mind (and happily so, since the bulk of the populace is sick of the ads and wants to move on/not think about politics) and that on the other the idea of working to overturn this election is a dead end. What's not a dead-end is working to identify and correct errors, glitches, irregularities and where they can be identified, disenfranchisement and discrimination (and whatever happens when that is done is what happens). No one doubts the sincerity of those who are working hard for verification... it's a matter of framing.
If we can't distinguish "Lakoff framing" from reality, we have a problem.
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