"Winning" with Language: Frank Luntz vs. Dobby Gibson
Charlie Sheen is "winning." So too is Republican strategist Frank Luntz, whose new book about successfully packaging ideas in persuasive language is called Win. Luntz is perhaps most famous for having engineered the phrase "death taxes" to raise republican ire over previously benign "estate taxes." Well... maybe "climate change" instead of "global warming" is more famous. In any case, Luntz is well known for his ability to frame concepts in inflammatory or understated ways, usually to the advantage of right-wing constituencies.
I first learned about Luntz through Frontline's great episode "The Persuaders." In that program, we see how Luntz uses focus groups and technology to determine which language resonates most with people. His methods were fascinating, and there's no arguing with the success of his concepts. Today, Luntz was a guest on NPR's Talk of the Nation, and I found his analyses both insightful and bi-partisan--really, anyone could employ Luntz's framing strategies, and Republicans' success with them probably only indicates their advanced degree of organization and... well... ruthlessness in capitalizing on emotional rhetoric.
The whole program was interesting, but an uncharacteristic personal lapse on Luntz's part was probably the most compelling moment in the program. In discussing Barack Obama's successful presidential campaign, Luntz asserted that the President "reads a teleprompter better than any Hollywood actor," and that he won the election, in large part, because his public presence was so much smoother than John McCain's. "Stevie Wonder reads a teleprompter better than John McCain," said Luntz. When Neal Conan's stunned silence registered, Luntz was left in his own awkward puddle. "You're not laughing," he said to Conan. "You're still not laughing." Very perceptive, Frank. That's right: you've got to be careful where you make fun of blind people. It's tempting to conclude that Luntz provided us with a window into his real personality. Would anyone be shocked if Luntz was dropping Helen Keller jokes in the country club lounge? I wouldn't. Would it surprise me if Luntz and his buddies shared a private reserve of chuckles about people of color, women, gays, the handicapped, the homeless, etc. etc.? No. It wouldn't surprise me if the key Republican language strategist was, at heart, kind of a dick. Sorry.
The whole business reminded me why of why I've invested so much of my life in poetry. It's not that poetry doesn't have its governing conventions, or that poets are never guilty of pandering. But compared to the cynical arena of pollsters and strategists, poetry is pure as the driven snow (which I just finished shoveling, this March morning in Wisconsin). When a writer is working creatively, no one is standing over his or her shoulder reminding him to stay "on message." And in contemporary poetry, where an incredibly wide variety of styles and forms are in play, it's possible for a writer to feel pretty unrestricted. Sure, I'm aware that there are contexts for that freedom--contexts of language, genre, culture, class, etc. etc.--but there's so little for a good poem to win (in terms of cash, benefits, worldly prestige or cultural impact) that it makes little sense for a poet to fake anything.
I'm so looking forward to hearing Dobby Gibson read at the Pump House Regional Arts Center next Thursday night, March 17th. It will be great to see someone take the stage on behalf of language's freshest energies. For an hour or so, it'll be possible to believe that we're really doing something here--something more than harnessing language to our political goals or narrow self-interests.
From the Poetry Foundation page on Dobby Gibson:
"Born in Minneapolis, poet Dobby Gibson earned a BA at Connecticut College and an MFA at Indiana University. Originally in graduate school to study fiction, Gibson wrote his first poem at the age of 26. He described his defection from fiction in an interview with the online audio archive From the Fishouse: “I eventually spent all my time on my fiction working on beginnings and endings, and began to quit caring about plot and characters and the giant movie set scaffolding that fiction depends upon. One thing that made poetry really powerful and charged for me was that it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing […] I love that feeling of transgression I get from writing a poem.”
Gibson is the author of Skirmish (2009) and Polar (2005), both of which were finalists for the Minnesota Book Award. Polar also won Alice James Books’ Beatrice Hawley Award. Of the poems in Skirmish, a Publishers Weekly review noted, “Gibson mixes the language of public discourse, science, TV and everyday conversation in a chatty if bleak voice that is both accessible and satisfyingly challenging.” Gibson’s free-verse poems combine lyric musicality, deconstructed aphorisms, and inventive humor."
I first learned about Luntz through Frontline's great episode "The Persuaders." In that program, we see how Luntz uses focus groups and technology to determine which language resonates most with people. His methods were fascinating, and there's no arguing with the success of his concepts. Today, Luntz was a guest on NPR's Talk of the Nation, and I found his analyses both insightful and bi-partisan--really, anyone could employ Luntz's framing strategies, and Republicans' success with them probably only indicates their advanced degree of organization and... well... ruthlessness in capitalizing on emotional rhetoric.
The whole program was interesting, but an uncharacteristic personal lapse on Luntz's part was probably the most compelling moment in the program. In discussing Barack Obama's successful presidential campaign, Luntz asserted that the President "reads a teleprompter better than any Hollywood actor," and that he won the election, in large part, because his public presence was so much smoother than John McCain's. "Stevie Wonder reads a teleprompter better than John McCain," said Luntz. When Neal Conan's stunned silence registered, Luntz was left in his own awkward puddle. "You're not laughing," he said to Conan. "You're still not laughing." Very perceptive, Frank. That's right: you've got to be careful where you make fun of blind people. It's tempting to conclude that Luntz provided us with a window into his real personality. Would anyone be shocked if Luntz was dropping Helen Keller jokes in the country club lounge? I wouldn't. Would it surprise me if Luntz and his buddies shared a private reserve of chuckles about people of color, women, gays, the handicapped, the homeless, etc. etc.? No. It wouldn't surprise me if the key Republican language strategist was, at heart, kind of a dick. Sorry.
The whole business reminded me why of why I've invested so much of my life in poetry. It's not that poetry doesn't have its governing conventions, or that poets are never guilty of pandering. But compared to the cynical arena of pollsters and strategists, poetry is pure as the driven snow (which I just finished shoveling, this March morning in Wisconsin). When a writer is working creatively, no one is standing over his or her shoulder reminding him to stay "on message." And in contemporary poetry, where an incredibly wide variety of styles and forms are in play, it's possible for a writer to feel pretty unrestricted. Sure, I'm aware that there are contexts for that freedom--contexts of language, genre, culture, class, etc. etc.--but there's so little for a good poem to win (in terms of cash, benefits, worldly prestige or cultural impact) that it makes little sense for a poet to fake anything.
I'm so looking forward to hearing Dobby Gibson read at the Pump House Regional Arts Center next Thursday night, March 17th. It will be great to see someone take the stage on behalf of language's freshest energies. For an hour or so, it'll be possible to believe that we're really doing something here--something more than harnessing language to our political goals or narrow self-interests.
From the Poetry Foundation page on Dobby Gibson:
"Born in Minneapolis, poet Dobby Gibson earned a BA at Connecticut College and an MFA at Indiana University. Originally in graduate school to study fiction, Gibson wrote his first poem at the age of 26. He described his defection from fiction in an interview with the online audio archive From the Fishouse: “I eventually spent all my time on my fiction working on beginnings and endings, and began to quit caring about plot and characters and the giant movie set scaffolding that fiction depends upon. One thing that made poetry really powerful and charged for me was that it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing […] I love that feeling of transgression I get from writing a poem.”
Gibson is the author of Skirmish (2009) and Polar (2005), both of which were finalists for the Minnesota Book Award. Polar also won Alice James Books’ Beatrice Hawley Award. Of the poems in Skirmish, a Publishers Weekly review noted, “Gibson mixes the language of public discourse, science, TV and everyday conversation in a chatty if bleak voice that is both accessible and satisfyingly challenging.” Gibson’s free-verse poems combine lyric musicality, deconstructed aphorisms, and inventive humor."
Comments
Post a Comment