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Language Pollution

View Track January 28th, 2007

By Aaron

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity." --George Orwell Early last week, I encountered a [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-luntz/words-thatdont-work_b_39208.html]noxious piece[/url] over at Huffington Post by Frank Luntz who, in case you weren't aware of it is personally, directly and almost single-handedly for the ruination of political discourse in this country. A conscience-less purveyor of rightwing propaganda for the last decade or so, his essay was whining and begging for mercy from the Democrats who swept into power in November, urging them to let bygones. You see, he doesn't want to be treated the way he treated others for the last 12 years; he can dish it out, but can't take it. (And the comments gave him back some small measure of the scorn and derision he's been disgorging so freely for so long now...and even provoked a [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-friedman/frank-luntz-is-aliar_b_39368.html]heated response[/url] from Big Brad of Bradblog fame.) While this served to reiterate what pusillanimous maggots Republicans REALLY are, it also exposed the fragile nature of their structure; the modern triumph of marketing over content. Their essential agenda has always been so ruinous that it cannot appeal to people on its own merits; unless you're among the upper fraction of 1%, it doesn't have ANY! Consequently, they require dirty tricksters, language polluters like Luntz--plus hatchet men like Turdblossom Rove--to make voters ignore their own best interests and elect GOP candidates. Think about THAT the next time some hair-puppet on cable tries to insinuate that both parties are somehow equally guilty for this mess we're in. Reprehensible as he is, however, Luntz is not the worst offender. In fact, he's almost benign compared to someone like, say, Newton Leroy Gingrich. Intelligent, glib and poisonous as a cottonmouth snake, Noot led the verbal race to the bottom back during the administration of Ronald Ray-Gun by challenging the patriotism of Tip O'Neill and other Democrats on the House floor in 1984. You remember Noot: Claimed the mantle of family values...yet was married three times; told his first wife he was filing for divorce while she was bed-ridden in the hospital; headed up the ambush of Bill Clinton for "immorality"...while having an extramarital affair of his own; went after Jim Wright savagely and personally. THAT Noot. It was nothing for him to refer to an opponent as a traitor or worse and, by example, he taught the ropes to Coulter, Savage, Malkin and every other maniac in the right's hate-mongering attack squad. He's a man who could explode into a rabid, foaming rage over wholly imagined liberal misdeeds even while simultaneously decrying the lack of civility in political discourse. He could pour a gallon of his own special hemlock and arsenic blend into the mix yet still be utterly unable to comprehend why people wouldn't play nice with him. The quintessential

hypocrite. His [url=http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4443.htm]1996 GOPAC memo[/url] is what really assured his place as an upper-echelon Republican language polluter. It listed "positive" words with which a candidate could describe his party and himself and "negative" words to be use when referring to Democrats and liberals. He called them "powerful;" I call them deliberately deceptive or loaded. Or lies, depending on context. The funny thing is that this despicable demagogue's barely-contained hysteria could sound sensible, even professorial at times...right up until the moment when he revealed his true reality-challenged self by saying something so thoroughly bereft of any trace of sanity that you almost couldn't believe you'd heard him correctly. His manner was one of studied loquaciousness combined with a nearly unconditional condescension that could never be at a loss for words. Yeah, he did his share--and maybe somebody else's--in degrading our dialogue. As a matter of fact, he could easily be considered Patient Zero of the disease that Republicanism has become. Noot was there first. Not far behind him came Rush Hudson Limbaugh III. Subjected--one could say indoctrinated--early on to the conservative worldview by being born into a prominent Missouri family with political connections, (His grandfather, Rush I, was ambassador to India during the Eisenhower administration.) he got his start in radio while still in high school under the name "Rusty Sharpe." He ducked the military draft then in force through an "inoperable pilonidal cyst" on his hindquarters and flunked out of college...perfect for his chosen career of overbearing media gasbag. Several times over several years he was fired for adding rude political commentary and when he moved to Sacramento, California in 1984, he was an impoverished nobody. Norm Woodruff, a flamboyant and openly gay radio entrepreneur, gave him his first ongoing gig replacing Morton Downey, Jr., whose fifteen minutes of fame lasted about nine minutes. (The rumors of Rush's homosexuality are widespread; I need not rehash them here. He's also a thrice-married drug abuser who sanctimoniously preaches family values. Right.) Limbaugh did not become truly successful, however, until two things happened: The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine by the FCC in 1987 and the election of Democrat William Jefferson Clinton in 1992. Now he had something to REALLY whine about and could do so at excruciating length without the need to give opposing viewpoints equal time. His entire shtick consisted of espousing outrageous opinions and claiming the most absurd fictions as unvarnished truth...and it hasn't changed from that day to this. He is worshipped by his legions of borderline retarded dittohead listeners merely because he SOUNDS confident and authoritative...and because his callers are so rigorously screened that no dissenting opinion is ever allowed to be heard on his show. This man is an obnoxious, unrepentant racist who has the ability to tap into the disaffection and visceral hostility of shambling, slope-forehead know-nothings, especially the kind who pride themselves on their ignorance. He can push all the right buttons to fan their unfocussed anger and their pervasive, paranoid sense of wrongful victimhood into flame. He's bloody good at what he does...and, because the the show was handed out for free to anyone who wanted it, he's now heard daily on about 600 stations. He can be rightly said to have laid waste to respectful public discourse with malice aforethought as a matter of pure Republican Party partisan policy; he's a language polluter without peer. Frank Luntz completes the terrible triumvirate.

Originally a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in history and political science, Luntz received his doctorate in politics from Oxford University at the age of 25. He immediately became a researcher for the GOP, test-marketing and polling on the best ways for them to present their policy ideas to the unwary in unified, sound-bite sized nuggets for maximum effect. He is probably most famous for crafting the wording of their 1994 Contract With America. I must confess to a certain grudging admiration for the work of Frank Luntz; he DOES know what he's about. Unfortunately, he bound himself to the [url=http://www.yuricareport.com/BushSecondTerm/Luntz.pdf]service of evil[/url] without considering the fact that prevarication, no matter brilliantly crafted, is not only morally wrong but also unsustainable. At his urging, the words 'death tax' started being used in place of 'estate tax,' 'privatized accounts' became 'personalized accounts' during the Social Security debate and the neutral 'climate change' has the place of the more accurate--and ominous-'global warming.' See how it works? He substitutes words and phrases that, while technically true, still manage to de-emphasize the ugly realities of what they describe. He makes the vile toxicity of GOP goals seem at least palatable. It's slick and it's treacherous...and, to those paying insufficient attention, it works. (Who can pay attention 100% all of the time while the demands of daily life compete? I know I can't...) THAT'S language pollution. What then is to be done about these crooks and liars who have seized our political communication? What's to be done about the fact that the concerted, relentless efforts of dishonorable people have turned the word 'liberal' into a virtual slur? What can we do to counter the machinations of those think-tank fungoids who, like the Terminator, will NEVER stop...and who are dreaming up new and different linguistic perversions even as I'm typing this? Do we counter their continuous assault with some alternative pollution of out own? Well, if the left is to retain its moral high ground, then descending to a subterranean level like the aforementioned vermin is not an option. We cannot conceivably out-cheat people to whom duplicity is as natural as breathing. Nor should we try. Although things may seem dismal and bleak at the moment, there IS light at the end of the tunnel and I mentioned it earlier: Lies cannot be perpetuated indefinitely. We saw it already on Election Day 2006; despite lockstep message discipline and the affinity of corporate media, Republicans got their hind ends sawed off and handed to them while preliminary forecasts for '08 are indicating more of the same, maybe a lot more. (Iraq and the minimum wage...need I say anything further?) People are not stupid and they can only be taken advantage of for so long. Eventually, a kind of entropy takes over and resplendent truth peeks out. The sheer irresistible forces of time and causality are on our side, folks. Reality cannot be denied. The bad news is that the confluence of events now--war escalation, Peak Oil, impending financial collapse--doesn't give us unlimited time. If, by some slim chance, a Democrat isn't elected president next year, it may be too late. So our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to speak clearly and concisely in all things at all times and never--ever!--allow the radical right's polluted language to go unchallenged. Jim Webb's [url=http://www.wanderings.net/notebook/Main/JimWebbStateOfUnionReply]stellar rebuttal[/url] to President Loser's state of the Union address is one textbook example. Also [url=http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml]George Lakoff[/url], a Berkeley professor of linguistics and co-founder of the Rockridge Institute,

has a few helpful ideas on the subject. This isn't going to be quick or easy...but defusing the propaganda MUST be done; there is no alternative.
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