From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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Jump in a Lakoff
Democrats' quest to figure out how to relate to voters in the American heartland
has brought them to--where else?--Berkeley. The San Francisco Chronicle reports
the party is seeking advice from George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and
cognitive sciences at the University of California, who "is a hot item
in liberal circles these days as he argues Democrats must develop a message
that resonates more deeply with voters":
His latest book, "Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate," is on best-seller lists in Washington and the Bay Area. Before the Nov. 2 election, then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, who heads the House Democratic Policy Committee, distributed hundreds of copies of Lakoff's book to their colleagues and staffs.
"It's all about words and craftsmanship,'' said Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, of Lakoff's advice. "He shows us that we ought to take the Republicans' words and show why they don't work, why they just aren't so.'' . . .
During the 2004 campaign, Lakoff suggested that instead of talking about how Bush had run up the national debt, Democrats should label it a "baby tax'' the Republican president had imposed on future generations.
He has suggested that same-sex marriage should be referred to as "the right to marry.'' Trial lawyers like vice presidential nominee John Edwards should instead be called "public protection attorneys,'' and the term environmental protection, which brings to mind big government and reams of regulations, should instead be termed "poison-free communities.''
OK, we think we see how this might work. "Abortion," for example, is such a harsh word; maybe Democrats could start calling it "choice" instead. Instead of saying they're for "racial discrimination" in favor of minorities, why not use a positive-sounding term like "affirmative action"? To try to make Republican judges seem menacing, the Dems could call them "extremist" or "out of the mainstream" (and if the judges happen to be black, add that their opinions are "poorly written").
You see the problem: It's not as if the Dems don't already do what Lakoff is recommending. Indeed, the supposedly groundbreaking insight this professor of linguistics and cognitive sciences is offering is nothing more than a commonplace of political rhetoric: Generally, it is good to describe things you're for in favorable-sounding terms and things you're against in unfavorable-sounding ones.
The Dems seem to think Lakoff invented euphemism and dysphemism. Judging by the examples in the Chronicle piece, we'd say he isn't even very good at employing them. "Public protection attorneys" as a euphemism for trial lawyers is simply laughable. (Actually, "trial lawyers" is a neutral term; it has negative connotations because trial lawyers have a bad reputation.) Calling same-sex marriage "the right to marry" seems unlikely to persuade anyone that the definition of marriage should change.
"Poison-free communities" isn't a bad phrase, but it's a lot less sweeping than "environmental protection," whose strength as a euphemism is its vagueness. "Environmental protection" justifies all sorts of things--not drilling for oil in Alaska, protecting "wetlands" and "endangered" rodents--that have nothing to do with pollution of residential areas.
"Baby tax" is the worst by far. Lakoff apparently patterns this after "death tax," which is an extremely effective dysphemism. "Death tax" works not only because it sounds bad but also because it invokes precisely what it refers to: a tax that is levied when someone dies. (It has the added advantage of being a shorthand description for a category that includes both estate and inheritance taxes.)
By contrast, what do you think of when you hear the phrase "baby tax"? It's hard to imagine an infant writing a check to the IRS, so a "baby tax" would more likely be a levy on new parents, or perhaps a consumption tax on diapers, baby food, cribs and other items for newborns.
The national debt isn't even a tax. A tax brings money into the government, while debt obliges the government to make expenditures in the future. Calling the debt a tax makes as much sense as calling a mortgage a salary. Taxpayers provide the funds to service the debt, of course, but babies generally do not become taxpayers until long after they stop being babies.
So Lakoff is advising the Democrats to do something they're already doing (and indeed that every politician does as a matter of course), and in ways that would be especially ineffective. And the Dems seem to be eating it up. One might say they've been taken in by a merchant of serpentine petroleum products.
Be
Careful What You Wish For
Now that same-sex couples in Massachusetts have "the right to marry,"
the Boston Globe reports, "many of the state's largest employers are dropping
health benefits for unmarried gay couples." Among them is the New York
Times Co., which owns the Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Some
gay-rights advocates want to have it both ways:
Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD, a New England advocacy organization, argues that taking them away is an unfair hardship, because the decision to marry is still more difficult for gay and lesbian couples. Unlike opposite-sex married couples, gay married couples will have to pay taxes on their benefits to the Internal Revenue Service, because federal law defines marriage as a partnership solely between a man and a woman. Gay marriage can also jeopardize enlistees' military status, and gay couples who marry may be barred from international adoptions. Some said they simply aren't ready to marry just because a longstanding barrier to marriage was suddenly lifted.
One of the better arguments for allowing gay couples to wed is that it would make it easier for companies to do away with benefits for heterosexual couples who refuse to get married. Many employers offer "domestic partner" benefits to opposite-sex couples as well as same-sex ones in order to accommodate gay employees while avoiding sex-discrimination lawsuits, a socially detrimental policy inasmuch as it weakens the incentive to marry.
Homelessness Rediscovery Watch
"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000
"Even if You're Staying at a Hotel on the Plaza, Homelessness Hurts"--headline, Kansas City Star, Nov. 26
"Homeless Shelters Getting Iraq Vets"--headline, United Press International, Dec. 7
Political
Poison
"Russian President Vladimir Putin said he 'cannot imagine' how genuinely
free and fair elections could be held as planned in Iraq next month given the
fact that the country is under 'total occupation' by foreign forces," Agence
France-Presse reports from Moscow.
This is rather rich, given Putin's meddling in the Ukrainian election, which his preferred candidate attempted unsuccessfully (thus far) to steal from pro-Western opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko. The Times of London reports that Austrian doctors believe Yushchenko "was poisoned in an attempt on his life during election campaigning":
Proof that Mr Yushchenko was deliberately poisoned would be a devastating blow for his rival, the Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych, as the two candidates prepare for a repeat of a presidential run-off on December 26.
It would raise questions about whether the poisoning was ordered by Mr Yanukovych, his allies, or even the Kremlin, which fears that Mr Yushchenko will take Ukraine out of its sphere of influence by joining Nato and the EU.
Blogger Frank J. has an intriguing proposal for avoiding future poisonings: "Have Jimmy Carter as an election monitor with his job to try the food and drink of each candidate to make sure it isn't poisoned. When Carter finds a legitimate case of a candidate trying to poison another, he can then be replaced by Bill Clinton."
Can't
They Find Any Real Friends?
"Researchers Take On Imaginary Playmates--for Real"--headline, Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 7
What
Would We Do Without Chiefs?
"Bomb Threats Caused Great Fear, Chief Says"--headline, Macon (Ga.)
Telegraph, Dec. 8
What
Would Cos. Do Without Studies?
"Study: Cos. Benefit From Productivity Gains"--headline, Associated
Press, Dec. 7
You
Don't Cite
"Arson Cited as Cause of Fires"--headline, Washington Times, Dec. 8
'Some
of Us Even Ride It'
Here's a correction that appeared on the New York Times editorial page yesterday:
An editorial published on Saturday about the proposal to build a football stadium on the far West Side of Manhattan suffered from a geographic malapropism in a reference to the New York subway. The line proposed for the East Side is known as the Second Avenue line, not the No. 2 line. The No. 2 line runs up the West Side of Manhattan, as it has for, oh, 100 years. We not only approve of its existence--we applaud it. Some of us even ride it.
Well, two cheers for the Times editorialists' sense of humor, but it's hard to believe anyone who actually rides the subway could make this mistake. We work for the editorial page of an international newspaper, but we know the difference between the No. 2 train and the Second Avenue vaporway.
And here's one from today's Times (ninth item):
A report in the "Arts, Briefly" column on Nov. 16 about a new Marvel Comics monthly series featuring the superhero Black Panther misstated his ethnicity and cited a precedent incorrectly. While many of his adventures take place in the United States he is African, not African-American. He would not have been the first African-American hero in comics in any case; the Falcon held that distinction.
Plainly the New York Times needs a diversity program to bring more superheroes onto the staff so as to avoid such insensitive mistakes.
Homer Nods
Yesterday's Dispatch
From the Porn Belt (since corrected) misstated the name of the Ninth Circuit
judge who concurred with the ruling in favor of a San Diego policeman who moonlighted
as a porn star. She is Dorothy Wright Nelson, not Dorothy Wright.
Want
Violence? Look No Further.
If you're Christmas shopping for a young videogame fan but aren't up on the
latest games, you're in luck: A group called the Interfaith Center for Corporate
Responsibility has prepared a list of the 10 most violent videogames. The list,
in Microsoft Word form, is here.
Happy shooting!
Great
Moments in Higher Education
An inspiring story from the pages of the Yale Daily News:
The "Harvard Pep Squad" ran up and down the aisles of Harvard Stadium at The Game [between the Harvard and Yale football teams] Nov. 20. They had megaphones in hand and their faces were painted as they encouraged the crowd to hold up the 1,800 red and white pieces of construction paper they had handed out. It would read "Go Harvard," they said.
But the 20 "Pep Squad" members were actually Yale students. And when the Harvard students, faculty and alumni held up their pieces of paper--over and over again--they spelled out "We Suck" in giant block letters the whole stadium could read.
Yalies Michael Kai and David Aulicino, both of whom are to graduate next year, had to overcome great adversity to realize their dream. They originally planned to do this a year ago, and rather than handing the pages out, they taped them to the seats. "The prank derailed when security guards, trying to clear the stadium out during a pre-game bomb scare, asked Kai, Aulicino and their cohorts to leave."
In the year since, they rethought their plan:
They created a system to have the Harvard crowd pass out the 1,800 cards themselves. The "Harvard Pep Squad" went to each row and handed out a pre-ordered stack of the red and white papers. In five minutes, Kai and Aulicino said, all the papers were passed out.
It took a great deal of planning, however, including a road trip to Boston. Kai and Aulicino attended the Oct. 9 Harvard-Cornell football game in Cambridge, simply to scout out the stadium and count the number of rows.
They also created "Harvard Pep Squad" T-shirts and even fake Harvard IDs. "It was almost sad," says Dylan Davey, another Yalie who joined in the gag. "There were all these grandfather and grandmother types--and they all had big smiles, saying, 'Oh you're so cute, I'm so glad you're doing this.' I felt bad for about two minutes. Then I got over it." Video is available at HarvardSucks.org.
Never let it be said that Ivy Leaguers are a privileged and pampered bunch.
Are
There Any Koreans Named Jimmy?
The Korean Anti-AIDS Federation, in an effort to promote condom use in South
Korea, wants to banish the word "condom" and replace it with a Korean
alternative, aepil. But there's a problem, reports the Korea Herald:
The word, which was chosen among 19,000 other submissions in a contest held by the KAAF, is derived from the Chinese characters for love and necessary.
"It turns out that there are people who are actually named 'aepil,' " said Kim Yoon-su, a spokesperson for KAAF said yesterday. "They were understandably very upset considering the sensitive nature of this subject. They thought it would have a negative impact on their lives and on the lives of their parents or children."
"I was asked, 'How would you feel if your mother was named condom?' " said Kim.
Apparently only 10 Koreans are named Aepil, but fully 20% of them called to complain. So it's back to the drawing board to find a new name for the prophylactic sheath.
Hey, we've got an idea: Why not call it a "baby tax"?
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to David Farkas, Michael Segal, Thomas Dillon, David Shapero, Harry Forbes, Mark Schulze, Rick Yarnell, Daniel Goldstein, Bill Vis, Brent Silver, Michael Siegel, Daniel Foty, Raghu Desikan, Jennifer Ray, Scott Yates, Ruth Murray, Erick-Woods Erickson, Brian Azman, L.J. O'Neale, Ethel Fenig, C.E. Dobkin, David Hamilton, Rick Stratton, Malcolm Hoar and Samuel Walker. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: The president needs a stronger Treasury for rougher financial times.
- James Taranto: Overturning Roe v. Wade would be good for the Democrats.
- Stefan Kanfer: A grand account of Hollywood's mix of brilliance and narcissism.
