"Talking Right"
from the Guardian (UK)


Republicans in America control the White House and both Houses of Congress. They also have their eyes fixed firmly on controlling the Supreme Court.

This is hardly breaking news. But one of the subtlest reasons they have been able to achieve such huge power is by controlling one of the least known - yet important - branches of American politics: language. After all, if you control and shape the way people talk and think about politics, it is much easier to influence them to give you their vote.

A newly-published book on this, written by the respected linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, is making some deserved waves in US politics. It goes by the catchy title Talking Right. But it is the tongue-mangling subheading that really catches the attention. It reads: 'How Conservatives Turned Liberalism Into a Tax-Raising, Latte-drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, Body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, Left-wing Freak Show.'

That is jarring enough. And also very funny. Or at least it would be funny if I hadn't seen the highly effective political advert that that it is quoting from. Note that I say 'quoting' not 'parodying'. For that subheading is taken directly from an attack on Howard Dean's doomed run for the Democratic nomination in 2004.

It ran during the Iowa caucus season and was made by the conservative lobby group the Club for Growth. In the advert, an announcer approaches a respectable-looking couple leaving a barbershop. He asks them what they think of Dean's tax plans, obviously framing them as a dangerous tax hike to America's middle class. The man responds with growing fury by saying: 'I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government expanding, latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, New York Times reading ...' at this stage his wife leaps into finish off the mantra '... body-piercing, Hollywood loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.'

It would have been hilarious if Dean hadn't then been so ruthlessly destroyed by a media intent on painting him as a liberal firebrand out to destroy Middle America. The truth was Dean was in many ways a moderately conservative and fiscally sound Democrat convinced the White House had misled the public in order to topple Saddam Hussein (which it had).

But just look at that list of buzz words. Latte, sushi, Volvos, the New York Times. They should all be innocent words. They should indicate a fondness for good coffee, Japanese cuisine, a comfortable car and an interest in world events. But those terms have been so taken over by the Republican message machine that instead they carry a huge amount of political baggage with them. That baggage spells out one message: Liberal. And, as we all know, in American politics Liberal is a four letter word.

Republican control of language has been utterly successful in demonising their political opposition. It flows out of Republican think tanks and press offices, down through a network of talk show hosts and columnists and out into the general public. I was reminded of this last week on a long drive from Houston to New Orleans.

As I listened to the radio I moved through various different stations just as a story about raising the minimum wage in Chicago was breaking. Yet each local conservative talk show host was spouting the same line: it's an attack on business, it's a union plot, it will destroy jobs. More scarily, they spouted the exact same phrases, often the exact same words.

Democrats in America have utterly failed to counter this. No politician in America now wants to be known as a 'left-winger' let alone a liberal. Yet in that case, how does one effectively promote left-wing causes or policies? The answer in America seems to be that you don't. Instead, as the Democratic Party is now doing, you engage in a long process wondering how you can 'move to the centre' and thus become much more like your opponent.

The barrenness of this position was summed up for me in the wake of John Kerry's disastrous loss in 2004. A much-hyped - and potentially flawed - poll was released showing that Bush had beaten Kerry among voters who believed 'moral values' were important. Yet 'values' - a theoretically neutral word - has been captured by conservatives and Democrats have let them. In America 'values' are taken to mean a set of right-wing views based around religion, patriotism and being anti-abortion.

This is crazy. I heard Dean ask, why isn't healthcare a value? Why isn't job creation a value? Why isn't better education a value? The truth, of course, is that they are. They are even values that many Republicans will want to address too. Whoever runs for the Democrats in 2008 will need to bear this in mind. It's not just new ideas that are now needed to win. It's new words to describe them.