Sorry if this makes the comments thread a bit complex, but I think both Derrick Jackson’s The GOP’s Poerverty Gambit and H.D. S. Greenaway’s Protesting too much on “gulag’ are things people should read today.
I will offer some snippets from each below the fold, along with a couple of comments of my own. Let me simply whet your reading appetite with the final line from Greenaway, who writes primarily for the International Herald Tribune:
I urge all to red both pieces in their entirety, but then, I always do that.
Both pieces deal to some degree with the question of rhetoric — how language is used, the effect it has. The issues MAY seem to be totally unrelated. I would argue that both pieces deal with how language had been distorted by Republicans. This is more than merely a framing question a la Lakoff. These are important issues of our commimtent as a society to justice, and of how we present ourselves at home and abroad.
Let me begin with several snippets from Greenaway. First, the beginning:
”Absurd,” said the president of the United States. ”Reprehensible,” said the secretary of defense. And the vice president said he was ”offended.”
What could be the basis for Amnesty’s indictment? The Amnesty report says: ”The US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to ‘re-define’ torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques and the practice of holding ‘ghost detainees,’ people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention, and the ‘rendering’ or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practice torture.”
And there you have it. The United States is engaged in a long-term effort to persuade an alienated Muslim world that the United States stands for justice. By allowing systematic torture and indefinite detention to sully our system, we have handed our enemies the most perfect recruiting tool we could devise, for it exposes all our high ideals about democracy to the charges of hypocrisy.
Greenaway is clearly far more in tune with how the U.S. is seen overseas than are most pundits here in the U.S., as anyone who reads foreign press consistently can attest. Not that this administration or anyone in Congress will insist on proper accountability.
Jackson’s focus is somewhat different. Let’s look at the very beginning of his piece to see how language use makes a difference:
Today’s pimps are conservative politicians who run off at the mouth about poverty-stricken nominees of color. Janice Rogers Brown, the conservative and African-American California Supreme Court judge, was finally confirmed this week to the federal appeals court in the District of Columbia. Her confirmation came after a host of Republican senators made her childhood part of her qualifications for the job.
Jackson has taken the denigratory phrase “poverty pimps” often used to criticize those who the Right views as bleeding hearts and turned around and applied it to their use of personal history to “pimp” the chance of Janice Rogers Brown. BTW — this is NOT a new tactic — think back to Pinpoint, Georgia and Clarence Thomas under the presidency of Bush 41. Jackson discusses how this tactic was used for both Clarence Thomas and Alberto Gonzales. First he discusses how the policies supported by these people would make that kind of advancement nigh impossible for others to achieve:
The judge is just the latest black or brown face to betray the ”color-blind” game of the Republicans. They eviscerate affirmative action and job training programs for the masses of African-Americans and Latinos under the guise of ”merit,” then they turn around and stereotype black and brown nominees as being up-from-poverty to obscure their conservative views.
Then, after reminding us about the prior usage, in the cases of Thomas and Gonzales, he notes the effectiveness of the tactic in what we then read in the socaled MSM:
Jackson, who is himself Black, closes his piece with a comparison of the Republican support for Priscilla Owen and janice Rogers Brown:
”Priscilla Owen graduated at the top of her law school class and then earned the number one score on the Texas bar examination . . .”
The support of Brown began:
”Janice Rogers Brown, the daughter of an Alabama sharecropper, attended segregated schools and came of age under the shadow of Jim Crow culture . . .”
The shadowy culture of the Republicans is out in the open again. For Owen, the first words were about merit. For Brown, the first words were about race and poverty. That is Jim Crow in the 21st century.
But it is more than Jim Crow. It seems historically that the only minorities the Republican party is now willing to support and promote are those who disavow the very programs that allowed many minorities, often including themselves, to become successful. We have seen this with Thomas and Gonzales, we can clearly see it in Rogers Brown. The few exceptions, like Colin Powell, who continue to support affirmative action, are restricted to policy areas suc as foreign relations where the issue is viewed as not relvant, so that they can be ignored.
I will be curious to see if this diary generates any interest, and if so, what comments are appended to the thread. Some may discuss both articles, some only one. Clearly I think both pieces are worthy of reflection.
And now, off to my last day of school for the year (the kids left Wednesday — I still have to sign out and then go to a celebratory lunch). Hope these articles are of value to some.
your ID is enough to get me to click on a diary.
Right now, I’m going for my coffee, so I can read this one more clearly.
Thank you – recommended!
thank you // you are welcome
for your kind words, and for tracking what I post
I learned to read beside my dad when he read his newspapers. He taught me about propaganda then. Later in Catholic schools I was taught “in the beginning was the word.” I have been aware of the Republican distortion and exploitation of language, extreme in this administration. Right now the term ‘war on terror’ is the misuse of language that is the most dangerous.
But back to your article. Rovian strategy has a pattern of focusing on side issues. Example the CBS-memo-Dan Rather. All focus was on the typing of the memo. The content proved to be true. The issue of Bush’s AWOL has been proven, but the administration got the media to focus on the typing and the form rather than the content. Lost was the issue of Bush’s shameful military ‘service’ compared with Kerry’s heroic service. So now the focus is being switched from human rights abuses and the international shame of Gitmo to the use of the word “Gulag.”
Congratulations to Mr. Shultz, man of the year already! He hits them back with historical logic. It might not be picked up by the propganda mouth pieces like Rush, Hannity and O’Reilly. They are likely to spit out “gulag” for some time.
Pricilla Owen has been declared ‘unqualified’ so poverty is listed as her number one qualification.
LACKS THE QUALIFICATIONS AND TEMPERAMENT REQUIRED OF A JUDGE
A substantial minority of the American Bar Association’s panel on federal judicial selection has rated Justice Brown “not qualified” to serve on the D.C. Circuit. Similarly, when nominated to the California Supreme Court in 1996, Justice Brown received a not qualified rating from the California Judicial Commission. Among other things, the Commission cited a “tendency to interject her political and philosophical views into her opinions” and complaints that she was insensitive to established legal precedent, lacked compassion and intellectual tolerance for opposing views, and was slow to produce opinions.
I was curious to know if she took advantage of Equal Opportunity to get into law school. After she exploited the advantage she spends the rest of her life condemning it. She is pulling up the drawbridge so others cannot enjoy the same opportunity.
Keep on exposing the sinister exploitation of language by this administration. It is a key issue.
the Republicans ‘poverty pimp.’ Her introduction usually includes her roots in Birmingham, Alabama on the wrong side of the tracks.
And any criticism of black candidates can evoke the race card.
middle- or upper-middle-class background. I seem to remember that she studied piano seriously and was a competitive ice skater.
You are right, the backgrounder for Condi given by Republicans usually emphasizes that she came from the era of segregation, rather than poverty. She was brought up in a middle class district of Birmingham. She denies that the civil rights movement was the cause of her success but rather it comes from her lineage.
and from TimesonLine
Many people assume that because Condi Rice grew up in Birmingham, Alabama — which in the 1950s and 1960s was the most segregated city in the South and a focal point of the civil rights movement — her childhood was deprived and that she did not see the light of opportunity until the civil rights movement began to bear fruit. But she insists this is untrue: her success did not arise from the civil rights struggle but from her own family legacy.
Do not put Condi on the poverty list, my error.
was sent away to a good school as a child, while his sister remained home. This came out during his confirmation hearings. I also remember his biting criticism of his sister, who was on welfare. I was almost more disturbed by his lack of compassion for his own sister, who had not enjoyed the (relative) advantages that he was given, than by his treatment of Anita Hill. Not that I’m dismissing that. I remember that it inspired many conversations among women on the topic of sexual harassment. Almost everyone had a story to relate.
Thanks for the diary. I love reading about word usage.
the only minorities the Republican party is now willing to support and promote are those who disavow the very programs that allowed many minorities, often including themselves, to become successful.
It seems to me you have made a very wise and important point here, and that while it is true of Republicans, and important to keep pointing out the hypocrisy, we also want to keep alert when Democrats do a similar thing. For instance, I am thinking of those who disavow the very groups who have been the backbone of the Dem party: Dems who push business to the front while pushing labor to the back; Dems who push no-choice to the front while pushing choice to the back; Dems who push for the war while pushing war protesters to the back, etc.
This kind of behavior runs rampant in both parties these days, imo. While I like to complain about the Repubs doing it, I want to use their example to keep us aware of the beams in our own eyes.
The thing about Condi was that she was friends with one of the little girls who was killed in the church bombing. So, a non-existant close call will qualify anyone for a pity pimping.