Author: Paul Rosenberg

Believe it or not, the same document that reveals Samuel Alito’s opposition to Roe v. Wade...

This diary is a convergent response to two recent diaries. One, by Chris Bowers at MyDD, addressed the use of code words by Democratic hawks to attack other Democrats on security issues-painting them as hopelessly out of the mainstream, when, in fact, it is the hawks who are in the small minority.  However, they still control the beltway debate. The other, by Booman at Booman Tribune, was an attack on framing. My first diary responding to Booman saw him repeatedly mischaracterize what framing is, over and over and over again. In this diary, I take a different approach.  I discuss Lakoff’s use of framing to articulate a different foreign policy vision– one that actually resonates with what the American people already believe… and with proven foreign policy success. This is badly needed, because not only do advocates of withdrawal lack media access, they also lack a common framework of understanding. And that, ultimately, is what framing is all about. Messaging is entirely secondary.

Booman hates framing because he just doesn’t get it.  And he just doesn’t get it because he’s been schooled in the one of the Western Tradition’s Big Lies–the Big Lie of disembodied knowledge.

He says:

Understanding Lakoff’s framing theories involves understanding basic logic. And I don’t feel like giving an academic explanation of all the intricacies of symbolic logic. So, I’ll just use layman’s terms.

To which media girl quite rightly responded:

Thanks for the contempt

Silly me! I just don’t understand logic! Goodness! That means the tarot cards are wrong?!

/sarcasm

Again, I think you’re arguing with a straw man. Framing is not willy nilly manipulation.

Booman himself is operating inside a frame.  The frame of disembodied knowledge.  And as media girl quite aptly notes, it’s a frame drenched in elitism.  It’s also utterly wrong.

Note: This is a story republished from the current issue of Random Lengths News.  None of the details should come as news to avid readers here, but the big picture may be illuminating for someone you know, particularly in response to the “criminalizing politics” meme.  Feel free to pass on.

Recent indictments and investigations of GOP lawmakers, lobbyists and associates are only the tip of the iceberg, according to longtime observers, including current and former true believers in the GOP cause.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist pulled a Martha Stewart this June. He sold all the stock in his family’s hospital chain just before the stock plummeted. He’s now under investigation for insider trading by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.  The latest wrinkle–the “blind trust” he used to supposedly insulate himself from conflicts of interest wasn’t so blind, after all.

Fortunately for Frist, he’s not the most high-profile Republican in hot water these days.

Almost simultaneously with the web publishing her own account of her involvement in the Valerie Plame Affair, New York Times reporter Judy Miller spoke at an awards ceremony by the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) at Cal State, Fullerton, close to Richard Nixon’s childhood home. Miller presented an award to `Deep Throat,’ Mark Felt, just after the keynote speech by her attorney, Floyd Abrams, who also defended The Times in the Pentagon Papers case, when the paper was somewhat at odds with a Republican Administration, rather than carrying water for one.

Deep Throat ~= Batman

Both Abrams and Miller attempted to equate her with Woodward, Bernstein and Felt as a courageous defender of the First Amendment. Both fell short. Felt’s grandson, Nick Jones, who accepted the award on behalf of his grandfather, did much better with a different equation.