Sunday, July 31st 2005
Baby Killers!
Professor Lakoff is at it again! From this week’s Newsweek:
The pro-choice groups themselves have also been heatedly debating what to do. This spring, activists in New York and Seattle invited Berkeley linguist George Lakoff to speak about how to reframe the abortion issue. “They found that choice wasn’t playing very well,” says Lakoff, who’s become an unofficial guru to beleaguered Democrats. He told the groups it was no wonder: “choice” came from a “consumerist” vocabulary, while “life” came from a moral one. In one of his more controversial suggestions, he advised the activists to reclaim the “life” issue by blaming Republicans for high U.S. infant-mortality rates and mercury pollution that can cause birth defects. “Basically what I’m saying is that conservatives are killing babies,” he says.
Well at least when the pro-life folks use the “killing babies” frame, they have some proof, as opposed to myths.
That’s genius! When you’re talking about abortions, the idea you want on people’s minds is definitely ‘killing babies.’ He sure knows his framing. Oh, wait, he’s pro-abortion?
Comment by Beetle — 8/1/2005 @ 10:01 am