Lovely Picture, but I Hate the Frame

There’s a lot of things going on in the world right now. A lot of people are talking about the Senate deciding that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over certain prisoners. Or President Bush, master of revisionist history, revising history by accusing others of revising history. Or the delayed House vote on the Federal budget — just like the last few years there’s no need to rush since the fiscal year started 6 weeks ago. Or the Democratic world rejoicing at what appears to have been a resounding victory over the Republican world in Tuesday’s elections. Or Pat Robertson’s continued silliness, this time calling down God’s Wrath over a school board election. There are already plenty of voices talking about that. I am uninspired to frost those particular cakes.

Instead, I would like to engage in some name-calling.

No, it isn’t what you think. George Lakoff is still thought of very highly in liberal circles. His fundamental idea, as you may recall, is that words — framing, or what we call things — matter. That’s fine, as far as it goes; political rhetoric is full of loaded terms like “tax relief” and “pro-choice” and “death tax.” Everyone who has been paying attention knows that these loaded terms are meant to make us think of things a certain way: “There’s a tax on dying? We’ve got to put an end to that!” Yet we have not stopped to consider the fundamental frames around our entire political spectrum.

“Conservative” brings to mind sober people in pressed blazers who worked hard to climb up the socio-economic ladder, who put aside 10% of their earnings for charity and another 10% for savings, and who are furthermore more or less content with the status quo. “Liberal” brings to mind long haired hippies and drug inspired music and whining about how we should take care of people and the various ways the world needs change while doing darned little about it.

“Right” versus “Left” is an even worse comparison. First of all, the overwhelming majority of people are very unsure what these labels mean. If you were to ask a dozen people whether they are “right” or “left” most of them would say “right,” but if you were to ask them their actual views, some of them would look a lot more centrist if not downright “left.” And who can blame them, everybody wants to be right. There’s the other problem. “Right” the direction cannot be distinguished from “right,” being correct. There is the unconscious feeling that “Left” must surely be “Wrong.” This idea has a long history of linguistic support: “gauche” is French for “left,” and who wants to be gauche?; “sinister” is Latin for “left” and certainly nobody wants to be known as sinister.

Can we please stop referring to the liberal end of the political spectrum as “left”?

Even the modern “Red” versus “Blue” distinction has problems. Why on earth are we using a system of classifying political thought on an coincidental color-coding on the 2000 Election electoral map? How on earth did these terms survive past Thanksgiving of 2000? Surprisingly, I think that Red/Blue labels are damaging to the Democrats. Consider this: would you rather be called a red-blooded American or a blue-blooded American? Hang a label like “Blue” on a patrician like John Kerry and watch him be ridiculed as an elitist snob. Red/Blue perpetuates the image of sushi eating latte drinking volvo driving coastal types ridiculing the hard working farmers and factory workers of the heartland, which the former refers to by the derogatory title “The Flyover States.”

We’ve got to take Red/Blue out back, shoot it, and put it out of our misery.

Every system we have of classifying current American political thought is subject to ridicule, but what should we put in its place? It is unfortunate that “Conservative” versus “Liberal” is the best thing we have, but if we must have an alternative naming convention, I think I have an idea.

Let’s take a page from the 70s. In several key respects, modern Conservatives are just as uptight as they were in the 70s, so I propose calling them after the famous Conservative TV Patriarch of the era, Archie Bunker. Archie was a man who believed in the New Testament, because it was the part of the Bible that was “still good.” He was a my-President-right-or-wrong support-our-troops kind of guy — if he was around today, you bet there would be a patriotic magnet on the back of his car. He was against his wife working, against his daughter wearing short skirts, against having the wrong sort of people in his neighborhood. He never met a stereotype he didn’t like. He was for hard work, lower taxes, and the Good Old U.S.A..

Oh, but if we use this metaphor, it is only fair to start referring to the Liberal end of the spectrum as the Meathead wing. Meathead — Michael Stivic — was Archie’s very liberal son-in-law. The contrast and conflict between the two was pretty much the thing that made the show work. He was the sort of guy who would wear a “make love not war” shirt under an army surplus jacket. He was a married college student, trying to get a good education and get a better job than his own father could ever have hoped for. He would have been for women’s rights even if his wife didn’t have to work to help him get through school. To be sure, there were holes in his View Of Everything, but nothing like those in Archie’s views.

Both terms are equally derogatory. Meathead States sneer at Archie Bunker States at risk of being called Meatheads. The Archie Bunker wing can mock the Meathead wing only by admitting that they are Archie Bunker.

In closing, “Gee, who could have known kids need sleep?” and a place I’ve got to check out!