Posted on 12/06/2004 12:45:36 PM PST by CHARLITE
According to Sunday's S.F.Chronicle, House Democrats meet tomorrow with UC Berkeley linguistic prof George Lakoff in hopes the wordwright can correct their spin. Watch this one!!!!
Lakoff is expected to advise the politician on what terminology to use. The big question is this: will the mass media follow? My money says it will. I have 40 years experience in the news media to back my bet.
Need proof? The media was powerful enough to limit "choice" to one subject. That alone should be cause for watching the "watchdog." Remember when the press was called "the running dog" of the establishment? Why don't we hear that anymore. Perhaps the running dog is dancing on its hindlegs, leaving little doubt who is playing the tune.
More timely, Lakoff suggests "right to marry" over "same-sex marriage." Does that mean the national debate should, in the interest of "equality," be expanded to include polygamy? We almost went to war over polygamy and thousands must live in that relationship. Will "kissin' cousin" take on a new meaning? These questions should have been asked a long time ago, but the press failed. Was it cowed, unthinking, biased or all of the above and more?
UC media high priest Todd Gitlin recently opined in Mother Jones that reporters are afraid of being accused of "liberal bias." He should know better than most that the mainstream media has a lot of little rivers now, thanks to the Internet and this kind of e-mail. The bully pulpit is gone, Mr. Gitlin.
I wonder if there was a media backlash in the last election, which was divided between "fly over" and "bookend states." How's that for terminology, professor? Flyover means "ignore them, they aren't worth looking at." It is a term of contempt from the bookends, New York and California, the media centers that keep the rest of the nation in line by telling it what to think. We are now split between those who say media "is" and those who say media "are." The gut says "is." It's defenders of the media who use "are."
It took a war to make "the United States" is common. Maybe we are in a kind of civil war now.
Na. What we are seeing is what the democrat party is made of... escaped mental patients.
Lakoff just does not get it. Of course the GOP did not win because of good ideas, good policies, and values that resonated with most Americans! The GOP won because of slick marketing and bamboozling the electorate with catch-phrase wording. Sorry, this type of thinking may have carried the day in the 70's and 80's, but the left no longer has a stranglehold on the language.
Now they are just the BARKING DOG......
No matter what's printed on the wrapper, if it's cr*p inside it's still cr*p whatever the label says.
Back then, no one imagined that they would be able to run a presidential candidate. It was unimagineable.
It's a WAR of ideas!
But not to worry! We have fought the war on drugs for how long in this country? Anybody know the score on that one yet?
Kinda.
No I don't think so, YET!
Now they are just the BARKING DOG......
More like a mongrel dog yapping at its betters.
Mongrel dogs (the NEW media) are extremly smart, pure-breds (the old media) are difficult to house break......
No doubt these intellectually overproud folks think that a uni-professor will give them victory in the wordsmithing contest.
Us smallbrained western country clods can't possibly be good at communicating.
Sarcasm aside, I believe one of Bush's strengths is communicating, in short easy to understand concepts. Maybe he's got some "phraseologists" at work for him, too.
This isn't Fort Sumter.
The dream of the socialists for some now has been to divide the country into regions which would eventually become separate countries. Makes America quite manageable from their viewpoint.
Won't happen. This little imbroglio is a mosquito bite on the political landscape of this country.
Now, if Kerry insists on a duel with Bush, I may think differently, but even Hamilton's fatal bullet didn't dent the armore of this country. There were other more hideously nasty and brutal campaigns than 2000 and 2004.
During Clinton's reign, they were a lap dog.
Anyone who would want two mother-in-laws deserves them.
I don't believe it is a civil war ... yet.
LOL! No doubt, it's hard to afford one!
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