Rule one - never bore the listener
By Libby
Via Avedon, this is a longish piece but well worth the time to read in full. Thom Hartmann on How Liberals Can Speak Without Boring Everyone to Tears. He defines the problem well. The neo-nuts have successfully sold their agenda with a combination of message discipline and damn good sloganeering. While admittedly, that's not an option for the reality-based community, the lesson here is if we want to sell our own ideas to a general public more preoccupied with shopping and the winner of American Idol than politics, we need to look to Madison Ave. It's all in the marketing.
Complicated explanations are simply preaching to the choir and don't register in the average Jake's brain. Less wonkery and more plain language would serve us well and a little message discipline wouldn't hurt either.
If we all, for instance, agreed never to call Iraq a war again and hereinafter refer to it as the occupation, it would go a long way towards redefining the debate. Wars, by definition must be won. Occupations end by withdrawing troops. We could neutralize one of the fringenuts' strongest linguistic weapons, simply by changing that frame.
Via Avedon, this is a longish piece but well worth the time to read in full. Thom Hartmann on How Liberals Can Speak Without Boring Everyone to Tears. He defines the problem well. The neo-nuts have successfully sold their agenda with a combination of message discipline and damn good sloganeering. While admittedly, that's not an option for the reality-based community, the lesson here is if we want to sell our own ideas to a general public more preoccupied with shopping and the winner of American Idol than politics, we need to look to Madison Ave. It's all in the marketing.
Complicated explanations are simply preaching to the choir and don't register in the average Jake's brain. Less wonkery and more plain language would serve us well and a little message discipline wouldn't hurt either.
If we all, for instance, agreed never to call Iraq a war again and hereinafter refer to it as the occupation, it would go a long way towards redefining the debate. Wars, by definition must be won. Occupations end by withdrawing troops. We could neutralize one of the fringenuts' strongest linguistic weapons, simply by changing that frame.
Labels: Bush Administration, liberals, Media, spin, Wingnuts
posted by Libby Spencer at 2:54 PM
9 Comments:
well when you are changing words often you are changing content. liberals don't need to change their vocabulary they need to change their goals. No one wants to hear about equality anymore. the 70's are over. We don't want to know what peoples vision for humanity or ideas for spending are. Why aren't there any constitutionalist democrats? Bill richardson got BOOED for saying he wanted to balance the budget. democrats need to be in touch with people, not trends in political vocabulary
Lester, you might be surprised to learn that the majority of Americans embrace liberal principles.
I would be very suprised because they DON'T. Bill Clinton said "the era of small government is over" he had a 72% approval rating. pelso i and co have forgotten that and havea 10 percent approval rating, so I guess it is on how you define liberal. so it seems clear that if you want liberals to win elections or not bore people you should embrace Clinton and jettison the socialist whiners who booed bill richardson because he said he wanted to balance the budget
all politically correct spending measures do is make the GOp look good when they vote them down
It does depend on how you define liberal Lester.
all spending is liberal. military spending is the worst, but their are others. the more you spend, the less popular you are. People like keeping the fruits of their labor. shocking I know
Lester, you're wrong about this but it's pointless to argue. We aren't going to change each other's mind on this.
we have a 3 trillion dollar a year budget. you think people want MORE spending? How would that even be possible? we are taxing borrowing nad debacing the currency to the limit as it is
No I don't think people want more spending, I think they want better priorities on where the money is spent.
we don't need to see a nutritionist, we need to go on a diet. we weigh 11 trillion pounds
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