Luntz the language killer laments lack of civil disagreements
By Lee Russ
Sunday, October 29, 2006 at 03:48 PM
Frank Luntz is the guy who guides the Republican distortion of language in order to "frame" issues the way that will make the public accept the frequently destructive and bizarre ideas that the Republicans offer up on how to run this country. Recent experience shows that he has played a large role in helping run the country into the ground by using semantics to artificially create support for policies that are adverse to the interests of a huge portion of the populace.
Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who conducts focus groups nationwide, agreed, saying, "In most parts of this country it is very difficult to have a civilized conversation between two people that fundamentally disagree."
No kidding, Frank? Do you think that might be because you have personally polluted the streams of discourse to the degree that no two people who disagree on an important issue have any common frame of reference to anchor the discussion?
Now that's chutzpah, folks. "Geez, the people I've semantically brainwashed can't carry on a friendly conversation with the people who haven't been brainwashed." Or, alternatively, "Geez, the people who I've yet to semantically brainwash can't carry on a friendly conversation with the people who have already been brainwashed."
Why do I think that his real complaint is that there are still people who haven't been brainwashed? If only we'd get with the damn brainwashing program, there'd no longer be any disagreements and we could all go back to being civil to the zombie extreme, standing shoulder to shoulder to carry out the "Contract with America" and win the "War on Terror" at the same time.
If you think I'm kidding about the semantic pollution this PR hypester has spread, check out:
- The Luntz memo on how to frame environmental debates.
- The Luntz memo on COMMUNICATING THE PRINCIPLES OF PREVENTION & PROTECTION IN THE WAR ON TERROR