Blog by Snowbird

My Washington Times Comment

George Lakoff is a professor at UC Berkeley and a founder of the Rockridge Institute. This comment is based on his article from the UC Berkeley news website and in response to Greg Pierce's blog on the Washington Times website.

I read an article, actually a question and answer session, from the UC Berkeley News with George Lakoff. He was asked why conservatives "appear" to be better at framing than progressives and why progressives haven't done the same thing. His answer astounded me with it's finely tuned rationalization of incompetence. Naturally, as with all lefty arguments, he uses big business and money for his reasoning. Conservatives have think tanks and foundations that fund those think tanks so that they can create this false framing and apply it to the people. He says, "they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV." Now, the ridiculousness of his claim that they have money set aside to buy conservative books would be laughable if it hadn't been said in all seriousness. As to the rest, in my opinion, that's just being smart. It's amazing that through the whole article he never acknowledges the fact that building infrastructure, TV stuidos, etc., produces jobs for the people. He goes into conservatives being the "strict father" and the progressives being the "nurturant parent." "Strict father" meaning a forceful, dominant figure, and "nurturant parent" meaning those who help individuals that need help (the selfless do-gooder). However, he fails to mention that without big, bad business there would be no money to help anyone. He openly admits that progressives have no idea how to talk to the public or how to follow a moral pattern that people can relate to. And instead of attributing this to the progressives lack of moral values, he attributes it to linguistics. Someone needs to let him know that the public is not stupid and that this country - it's President, Senate and House - is run by Republican's because the public voted for it. If he thinks that over 62 million people who voted for Bush are dumb, he's not going to win over any Independents or moderate Republicans. Let him preach to his choir, he's not going to reach anyone outside the leftist base.

posted by Snowbird @ 4:25 PM