Talking Down Talking Points (this post is unneccessarily long)
This is more of an observation post than a link-filled post, but I daresay this is a phenomenon so widespread and apparent it should require no specific demonstrations. I suppose I just want to bring it to light in its own right and ask a question:
It seems to me that an alltogether disproportionate amount of political and journalistic discourse recently has been plagued by an increasingly narrow lexicon. It seems that our President's folksy, straight-shooting mannerisms and reluctance to get beyond his talking points, coupled with his tendency to ostracize/imprison/explode "bad guys" has forced any discussion of politics into a contest over control of the preferenced phrases. For instance it seems that the crucial determination to be made regarding any group of people is whether or not they are "peace loving." The Iraqis have been deemed a "peace loving people," a determination which lead to its own set of consequences once it was deemed that their leader was himself not peace loving, etc. But it becomes more important now when we see how desperately both the Israelis and the Lebanese claw over one another to attempt to demonstrate to the Media syndicates how they are "peace loving" and how "peace loving" they are, each demonstrating many of the ways in which they love peace, often by means of talking about how the other guy is not peace-loving. [I'd hope at this point that the repetition of the phrase is performative, and you see how vacuous it really is].
Example number two: every and any election must be what? Free and fair, of course. Now, this seems to be somewhat easier to deal with than peace-loving, but it is similarly simplistic, and seems to have survived simply by alliteration. I think that the closest related phrases to this one are probably 'Hot and Spicy' and 'Fast and Furious.' All elections are free and fair, even the ones that aren't, because there's always someone who can deploy this phrase the quickest. Elections that we don't like can quickly become "not free and fair" (rarely 'unfree and unfair,' as vowels are a bit more effete than consonants).
Mandates are also very popular now; if 49 or so odd percent can give you a mandate, there's nary a political leader in the world who cannot or will not lay claim to this gem.
Others abound, but these are my favorites and perhaps the most repetitive. To call this sort of sloganeering empty rhetoric is indeed easy enough, but what happens when these terms become endemic, not only fixing the demeanor of any discussion, but preventing discussion from escaping into more meaningful terms? When nations and lives rest simply on whether or not the American public can be convinced that you're 'Peace loving,' is this not something of a straightjacket for meaningful political discussion? I've went on for a while, I don't know if i've curried any support or drawn any conclusions, but I'm worried by the tendency and upset that otherwise meaningful issues fall prey to this hazy ambiguity and arbitrarity
It seems to me that an alltogether disproportionate amount of political and journalistic discourse recently has been plagued by an increasingly narrow lexicon. It seems that our President's folksy, straight-shooting mannerisms and reluctance to get beyond his talking points, coupled with his tendency to ostracize/imprison/explode "bad guys" has forced any discussion of politics into a contest over control of the preferenced phrases. For instance it seems that the crucial determination to be made regarding any group of people is whether or not they are "peace loving." The Iraqis have been deemed a "peace loving people," a determination which lead to its own set of consequences once it was deemed that their leader was himself not peace loving, etc. But it becomes more important now when we see how desperately both the Israelis and the Lebanese claw over one another to attempt to demonstrate to the Media syndicates how they are "peace loving" and how "peace loving" they are, each demonstrating many of the ways in which they love peace, often by means of talking about how the other guy is not peace-loving. [I'd hope at this point that the repetition of the phrase is performative, and you see how vacuous it really is].
Example number two: every and any election must be what? Free and fair, of course. Now, this seems to be somewhat easier to deal with than peace-loving, but it is similarly simplistic, and seems to have survived simply by alliteration. I think that the closest related phrases to this one are probably 'Hot and Spicy' and 'Fast and Furious.' All elections are free and fair, even the ones that aren't, because there's always someone who can deploy this phrase the quickest. Elections that we don't like can quickly become "not free and fair" (rarely 'unfree and unfair,' as vowels are a bit more effete than consonants).
Mandates are also very popular now; if 49 or so odd percent can give you a mandate, there's nary a political leader in the world who cannot or will not lay claim to this gem.
Others abound, but these are my favorites and perhaps the most repetitive. To call this sort of sloganeering empty rhetoric is indeed easy enough, but what happens when these terms become endemic, not only fixing the demeanor of any discussion, but preventing discussion from escaping into more meaningful terms? When nations and lives rest simply on whether or not the American public can be convinced that you're 'Peace loving,' is this not something of a straightjacket for meaningful political discussion? I've went on for a while, I don't know if i've curried any support or drawn any conclusions, but I'm worried by the tendency and upset that otherwise meaningful issues fall prey to this hazy ambiguity and arbitrarity
posted by shrf at 2:19 AM
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