Author: Lavoisier1794

I received the following email from the Maryland Democratic Party Chair Terry Lierman and it is truly shocking.  Apparently Michael Zak, a speaker at a GOP dinner in Calvert County, said that “mastery over blacks has always been Democratic policy.”  And get this: Lt. Governor Michael Steele, a likely candidate for Senate and favorite of the rightwing blogosphere, called Zak’s book “his favorite book!”

And so much for our SCLM.  Howard Dean mispeaks a few times and they are all over him but Steele endorses a crazy speaker like Zak and it doesn’t get a peep of media coverage even by the major Maryland papers.  Read the whole thing below and sign the petition.  And also recommend the diary if you wish.  Maybe then the conservative media will actually pay attention.  I suppose it couldn’t hurt to write the Post’s ombudsman or letters to the editor too.

“Mastery over blacks has always been Democratic Policy.   Before it was cotton.   Now it is misery.”
-Michael Zak, Republican Keynote Speaker

Shockingly, the man who delivered these offensive remarks last month to the Calvert County Republican Women’s Club is now idolized by Maryland’s senior Republican officials, including Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele.

A Republican Leader of the House of Delegates also defended propagandist Michael Zak, who made several other deceptive and divisive statements during his keynote address.

Zak Said Democrats Want to Keep Children Poor and Uneducated. “Democrats are socialists and we should call them socialists. It’s to the Democrats’ advantage children grow up poor and uneducated.”

[Calvert Recorder, 5/25/05]

Zak Says Democrats Want to Keep an Underclass of Poor Blacks. “Trapped in the role once filled by slaves before the war and then afterward by poor blacks during the Jim Crow era, an underclass today maintains the political and economic power of the Democratic Party elite and those in their employ, if indirectly, in the government bureaucracy.”

[Zak, Back to Basics for the Republican Party]

Zak Says Democrats are Unpatriotic and Don’t Respect the Constitution. “The unpatriotic tendencies of the Democratic Party did not begin recently.”

[Calvert Recorder, 5/25/05]

The common perception that Democrats are somehow less respectful of the Constitution, that they often revel in stretching and twisting it to suit their purposes, is valid.” [Zak, Back to Basics for the Republican Party]

It is not sufficient to dismiss this character as a crack pot.

Prominent Republicans are heralding Zak’s work and promulgating his rhetoric of hatred and fear in Maryland and around the country.  Read for yourself on Zak’s website (http://www.republicanbasics.com/comments.html) how our own Republican Lt. Governor Michael Steele praised Zak’s extremist viewpoints — using the words “Phenomenal” and “Outstanding” to characterize Zak’s book, which Steele also says is “my favorite book”.

Now Steele wants to be Maryland’s next U.S. Senator.

I believe all Marylanders expect and deserve more from a U.S. Senator. More dignity and honesty, less divisiveness and misinformation.  Michael Steele has failed an important test of character by aligning himself with Michael Zak’s dangerous, deceptive and racially divisive commentary.

Steele must immediately disavow Zak’s offensive, outrageous remarks and he should withdraw his endorsement of Zak’s inflammatory book.

If you agree with me, please sign our petition to Lieutenant Governor Steele today and demand that he openly reject Michael Zak’s shameful hate speech and fear tactics.

Click here to sign the petition.

Please, please, stand up proudly for your Democratic values and our Democratic Party.  Stand up for the priciples we share: unity, inclusiveness and an abiding commitment to helping those in need.

Democrats in Maryland can take pride in what out Democratic Leaders are doing to fight for Maryland families. Whether it’s working for a fair, sensible plan for Social Security, raising the minimum wage, protecting health care access and affordability, ensuring adequate benefits for our veterans, or fighting for full funding for education, we have a positive agenda for moving our State and our nation forward.

Unfortunately, we live in a new era dominated by the politics of personal destruction. If we stand by and allow attacks on Democrats and our Party to go unanswered, the citizens of our State may come to believe these lies.

Please join our petition and tell Michael Steele that we expect much more from our leaders.

Thanks for your support!

Terry Lierman
Chair
Maryland Democratic Party

First, I have to say that George Lakoff has done an excellent job of explaining to the progressive community how Republicans use language and framing to their advantage.  Additionally, the strict-father model seems to be a pretty good represenation of the conservative mindset.

However, it occured to me while reading Lakoff’s book a while ago that Lakoff’s suggestions for how progressives should respond seemed both unwieldy and naive.  These blog posts by Ezra Klein (here and here) put forth the same basic ideas far more articulately than my first impressions. (More below the jump)
The critique of Lakoff’s suggestions that the his guidlelines are unwieldy are acknowledged by Lakoff himself in his book and he suggests that this problem will be solved by further research, which seems reasonable.

However, his real problem is that his gender neutral nurturing parent doesn’t exist.  There are no gender neutral people so its awfully difficult to come up with imagery and language to evoke that.  Furthermore, some of his best individual suggestions on particular issues (I like a few of them) don’t really fit in this model’s framework.  For instance, I cannot for the life of me figure out how the idea that taxes are what one pays for the privledge of living in a peaceful and prosperous society (a good idea from Lakoff) is directly related to the concept of a nurturant parent.  Lakoff’s explanation of the connection seemed rather tortured to me.

I think there has long been a progressive/liberal/labor counter frame (instead of a me, me, me, and my familty frame that is the strict-father frame). It’s called SOLIDARITY and liberals have used it quite succesfully for a very very long time. It’s about community, bonding together, and fighting for your fellow man (or woman). It’s about a world where there is something greater than just me, myself, and I. Lakoff’s frame on taxes, one of his few decent ones fits well here.

Anyway, my biggest problem with Lakoff is that he looks at all the “Orwellian language” (eg. The Clear Skies Initiative, death tax) the Republicans use and then advises progressives to expose Republican uses of Orwellian language but not to try to do some language twisting of our own.  Essentially, Lakoff is advocating worse than bringing a knife to a gun fight.  He’s advocating bringing a Teddy Bear.  For instance, there is no reason why Senator Clinton and Senator Reid’s birth control bill should not have been titled the “Abortion Reduction Act of 2005.”  I’d like to have seen Santorum or Frist try to explain their way out of opposing that one when a 30 second ad saying they voted against it gets run.

This wouldn’t udnermine the pro-choice position in my opinion. After all when the Republicans talk about the “Clear Skies Initiative” they don’t seem to worry about this making more people want environmental protection and undermining their ideology. Lakoff also seems to assume that certain frames such as the War on Terror and certain emotions such as fear inherently fall under the strict-father model.  I think that certain frames are at any particularly time tied to an ideology but I’m not so sure that they are wedded to them because a certain ideology inherently runs on a certain psychological model (such as the strict-father model).  I think that models such as the strict-father model are the guidelines that ideologues use to stake a claim to certin frames.  It is quite possible for frames to be stolen (take for example the concept of X Party Represents the Common Man).  I discussed all of this in more depth in the this old diary.

I also think that there is a way to appeal what I will call Solidarity voters and strict-father voters. I think its the frame of leadership. This frame can activate both models in my opinion, something which Lakoff seems to not to invision as possible. In strict-father, leaders are needed to give us all instruction (note the practical idolotry of Bush’s persona by many conservatives). On our side, we see leadership as someone seizing the initiative to lead all of us to make the world a better place (when you frame government in these terms, “BIG Government” doesn’t sound nearly as scary).  By using a “leadership” theme in most of our statements, Democratic candidates should be able to attract following from those with differing mental mindsets.

Feel free to discuss below any other critiques you have of Lakoff and other ideas for framing beyond the gender neutral nurturant parent model.  Or feel free to critique my views as well.

Well, see over at kos I post a lot of analytical and activist stuff like cross-posting stuff for the DNC Vice Chair (which lots of people read) and creating master plans to win back the House (which fewer people read).  I’d link to those tow posts, but dkos is down at the moment anyway.

Well, everytime I look at this beautiful new scoop site I feel a need to post on it.  But I don’t want to treat it the way I treat myDD: like that second puppy you bought that you give crappier (ie solely crossposted) treats too.  No, I figured I had to do something different over here at the Booman Tribune.

So I looked at that silly green frog and I was inspired.  From now on, I shall post playful (but still vaguely political) stuff over here and serious stuff over at dkos.

So without further ado…a silly poem.
Right now my girlfriend’s in Ireland what can I say?
I heard they’re having some new problems with the IRA.
But I’m not worried, I’m pretty sure she’s okay.
However, back here in the good ole US of A,
There is a President who makes all a bad day.
And who can forget what his friends in Congress say:
We’ll be out of Iraq by 2014’s May
But don’t worry it won’t cost us too much hay
Because we’re busy gutting the VA.