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TWO SLAPS FOR GEORGE LAKOFF
George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant is a best-seller among Democratic progressives seeking a way out of their post-election doldrums. Frankly, Lakoff's New Age-y psycholinguistics leave me cold, and many of the reasons why can be found in two new articles that offer sound critiques of him. Longtime author-activist Frances Moore Lappé has penned "Time for Progressives to Grow Up: Beyond Lakoff's strict father vs. nurturant parent, a strong community manifesto," which the Guerilla News Network has posted and Utne Reader Web Watch features as this week's lead choice. She argues that, "rather than reacting to [Lakoff's] 'strict father' frame by searching for a better use of a 'nurturing parent' frame, let's reframe the entire conversation to one that begins with a definition of citizens as responsible grown-ups, not helpless children. In this progressive moral vision we strive to live in strong communities-safer and more viable than ones that rely on a strict father, who on deeper examination may turn out to be only a stubborn loner, a bully bringing on the very threats from which he claims to protect us?"
And, you must not miss the terrific send-up of Lakoff by my L.A. Weekly colleague and companero Marc Cooper (see photo) in the May issue of The Atlantic, "Thinking of Jackasses: the grand delusions of the Democratic Party." Marc growls that Lakoff's book is "personal therapy disguised as politics, psychobabble as electoral strategy. Lakoff, revealingly, provides nary a word on reshaping the Democratic Party itself, blunting the influence of corporate cash, eliminating the stranglehold on the party and its candidates by discredited but omni-powerful consultants, reversing its estrangement from the white working class, finding some decent candidates, or just about anything else that might require actual strategic thinking, organizing, and politicking. Never mind. What liberals most need to do, Lakoff says, is 'be the change you want.'
"This is not to disparage as self-indulgent, latte-sipping navel-gazers and whiners the 48 percent of the electorate that voted Democratic. But Limbaugh-driven stereotypes aside, the Democratic liberal and activist crust does indeed seem ever more in denial about the depth of its defeat, about its detachment from what it claims as its 'traditional base,' and about its apparent willingness to pursue little more than a self-referential, self-indulgent political aesthetic. It's much easier nowadays to fancy yourself a member of a persecuted minority, bravely shielding the flickering flame of enlightenment from the increasing Christo-Republican darkness, than it is to figure out how you're actually going to win an election or, God forbid, organize a union...." You've absolutely got to read the rest of Marc Cooper's biting analysis by clicking here.
Posted by Doug Ireland at 04:27 AM