Progressives Lack a Limbaugh-Like Voice (George Lakoff)

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 4/19/09

[nickcarraway]

You turn the AM on and there's Rush, or Savage, or another of the army of right-wing radio talk show hosts. You may not be listening hard, just working, driving, doing busywork or the laundry. Yet if you listen day after day, year after year, your brain will begin to change.

Words, even those heard casually and listened to incidentally, activate frames - structures of ideas that are physically realized in the brain. The more the words are heard, the more the frames are activated in the brain, and stronger their synapses get - until the frames are there permanently.

All this is normal. It is how words work. And the right-wing message machine has found a way to take advantage of it - activating, as it were, a conservative system of thought.

The problem is, those thoughts on the radio are hate city. Savage rails against what he calls "the weakening of the military" by "affirmative action," "illegal immigrants," and "Marxist politicians." What proves it? The submarine accident in the Gulf of Hormuz.

Tune in to Rush. On the one hand he's pitching "rugged individualism," "liberty," and the absolute free market against Obama's call to unity and a sense of national responsibility.

Then he's hammering the AIG bailout and its bonuses, not mentioning that it was the conservative destruction of reasonable regulation that lay behind our economic disaster.

One diatribe after another, the crucial facts left out or lied about, day after day, city after city. It has an effect.

Where are the progressives? Largely absent. Or talking issue by issue, not about general themes. We have some icons: Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert. But they only talk to us. They are not omnipresent.

[gidget7]

Oh I get it, like “Goerge Lackoff, rhymes with.”

Idiots, the message sticks because it is true. We hear your goons day in and day out on the evening news, on commercials, etc etc etc and it DOES NOT resonate, it is tuned out. Were your stupid points true, the opposite would happen. Your talking points on the left speak to America as if we are all too stupid to see your lies, and that is why talk radio does so well.

[irv]

The problem is, those thoughts on the radio are hate city.

Pure lies. I stopped reading at this point. I get tired of the lefty bigotry against conservatives that is so pervasive that it's phony stereotypes get repeated, even sometimes by people who should know better.

[Belasarius]

As a side issue, I find it hard to take exception to the left snickering over “tea-bagging” and at the same time snicker over “rhymes with.” Seems a bit inconsistent although this is a heck of a lot cleaner site than anything that is popular on the left.

Not that I’m a saint, I’m a retired sailor, and my private language is not pretty. I just don’t like to see bad language in what passes for discussions about important issues. Just an observation.

[DouglasKC]

Where are the progressives? Largely absent. Or talking issue by issue, not about general themes. We have some icons: Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert. But they only talk to us. They are not omnipresent.

Wow...he only forgot to mention about 300,000 other activist liberals with a public voice.

[gidget7]

You are obviously not a Rush listener. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Spare me, language is at best, implied, in that phrase. And it happens to be a quote. NEVER is the implied term stated.

[tet68]

Actually what the liberals can’t seem to wrap their minds
around is that what they need is a Limbaugh AUDIENCE, even
the nations liberal/socialists won’t support a liberal radio.

[Old_Grouch]

Liberal 'progressives' are hardly absent--in the school curriculums foisting sexual perversion into childrens minds and revisionist history. In the judiciary making laws and thwarting the will of the people. In the government overtaxing, overregulating and weakening constitutional foundations by feckless politicians. In the MSM twisting truth's and being complete cheerleaders for a president who trashed America to the world. Shall we continue??? No, but progressives are highly active and despise that talk radio and other patriots forms of expression are revealing the light of truth and reality. As light to a vampire progressives fear the constitution-loving, God respecting patriots of Talk Radio and it's success with the real back-boned American people where the conservative message resonates.

Amen!

[domeika]

This idiot wonders where the progressives are? Fist off, progressive are how the communists (i.e. Lenin & Co) described themselves. He might know that if he ever cracked a book. As to where they are on radio though? It's not so hard to fugure out....no one listens to them on the radio because you can only say you hate something or someone so many times in about 3 hours and people can only listen to so much before their ears start to bleed. In addition, when none of your thoughts are longer than a bumper-sticker slogan or deeper than a puddle in August, there literally is no content to air, and thus the absence of progressives on the airwaves.
And hate speech....What hate speech? I listen to Limbaugh, in fact I'm a subscriber and I've never heard hate speech on his show, or racism, or anthing else the left tries to say Limbaugh is guilty of. If anything, he is guilty of thinking that all people are created equal, just not in the head sometimes, which is where progressives, i.e. liberals enter the equation. I've heard a lot of truth on his show though, and to liberals I guess that is hate speech. Also, when Mr.rhymes with... speaks of the AIG bonusses, it proves he has no idea what he's talking about. I've heard Rush speak about the bonusses many times, and he doesn't disagree with them getting their bonuses. In fact, the bonuses were retention bonuses, meaning You know your're heading out the door, but please keep working to shut things down, AND, they were agreed upon BEFORE the bailouts. Rush also pointed out that it was Chris Dodd, and the zero admin that made sure that the AIG execs were still to receive their bonusses, then feigned ignorance and outrage whilst jumping on the mob-mentality band-wagon to villify them an steal their money in broad daylight (As an aside, If I were one of them, I might be waiting in the bushes with a bat). Rush exposed their hypocrisy, as he always does, and it infuriates them to no end that they can't shut him up.

Cheer up Mr rhymes with..., now that teleprompters are in, your crowd can probably get 3 or 4 hundred writers to provide a few hours of distortions, propaganda and outright lies to a useful idiot with a nice voice.....Oh wait, that would be Colbert, Stewart,....

[Victoria Delsoul]

I see this as an attempt to silence the strongest voice of dissent in the country – conservative talk radio. This so-called professor is just rallying the democrats and their media base, to motivate them to keep launching attacks on talk radio as a way to appeal to the people so they may enact and implement the fairness doctrine easier.

One diatribe after another, the crucial facts left out or lied about, day after day, city after city. It has an effect.

Funny, he is accusing conservative talk radio of doing what the liberals and their cohorts in the media do 24/7, and a main reason that Obama is in power today is because of their consistent and systematic pro-Obama message.  And guess what, it worked. Obama won.

Let's see if the damage isn't permanent come next election.

[mjp]

Empathy is why we have principles like freedom and fairness, not just for ourselves but for everybody.

Lacoff is just another commie failure who hates himself, his life, and achievers.Empathy and fairness = code words for emotionalism, altruism, collectivism, statism, and socialism.

[Paladin2]

I hope this changes for the “progressives”. One 0be is n0t en0ugh.

[Wil H]

The Liberals’ problem is that even if they had someone with a brain that could explain their policies their constituents are too stupid to understand them and have the attention span of a gnat.

So therefore everything has to be done in soundbites a slogans.

[Sherman Logan]

That’s actually the scariest thing about this bunch.

They must always be moving the goalposts.