Sunday, March 06, 2005
Marc Cooper shreds the limousine Left
Cooper's essay is, quite simply, required reading by both the Left and the Right. If you are conservative, read it for sheer entertainment value. If you are liberal or left, read it as a cri de coeur from an actually practical leftist who cares more about winning the next election than invitations to cocktail parties. The official TigerHawk-selected teaser quotation:
Sampling the dinner parties, salons, book events, and fundraisers on the liberalish West Side of Los Angeles over the past few years has been its own sort of nightmare, thank you very much. It features the liberal left as the new incarnation of the John Birch Society, the black-clad beneficiaries of studio residuals and university tenure—often banking family salaries deep into six figures (or much, much more), their offspring booked into $20,000-a-year prep schools—as the last-standing defenders of enlightenment and democracy. At one liberal party last year, in a sprawling Sunset Boulevard mansion bedecked with statues and gold leaf, where Aaron Sorkin and Rob Reiner clinked glasses with Laurie and Larry David, the Chanel-clad hostess (a very wealthy industrialist) mounted her staircase and, speaking to the all-Democratic crowd, vowed to dedicate her energies to fighting George W. Bush. To thunderous applause she announced, "We are tired of being disenfranchised!"
I have but one nit to pick: There is no way that the prep schools in question cost only $20,000 per year.
UPDATE: The driver of this car, parked this morning outside of Princeton's Barnes & Noble, should definitely read Cooper's article. Otherwise, all those bumper stickers will be for naught...
1 Comments:
By 
Gordon Smith, at
Mon Mar 07, 08:58:00 AM:
Mr. T. Hawk,
I tried to follow directions. I really tried, but I got through only about half of Cooper's article. Cooper treats the Lakoff framing of frames as outrageously shallow and silly while ignoring the fact that it's true.
Frank Luntz and his ilk have focus grouped the bejesus out of various words and phrases to make otherwise unsuppportable policies salable. This is why we've had so many "tax relief", "job creation", "compassionate conservative" bills pushed through congress. This is why a proposal to increase air pollution is called clear skies, why a proposal to allow clear cutting is called healthy forests, and why George W. Bush in Interviews with a fellow named Wead said that he uses certain code words when talking about religion.
Lakoff's ideas are spot on.
Now, it's easy to make fun of rich liberals. I do it regularly with consistently excellent results, but to lump Lakoff in with Rob Reiner is like lumping Chomsky in with Michael Moore.
