Lakoff transcript now available

Surprised to see it up so quickly. Note: also contains the Moyers interview with Kevin Phillips, who wrote the book American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush.

Lakoff discusses reframing: how they do it, how we must do it. He provides examples they've used: tax relief, healthy forests, clean skies, trial lawyer, liberal. He points out if they need to do this type of reframing, then it must contain a weakness.

The response is to reframe their reframe, using our words and our values. I liked his reframe of trial lawyer: public protection attorneys.

Lakoff very quickly rattled off a bunch of progressive values we need to bring up, in order to counter their language: integrity, honesty, fairness, freedom, community, trust. He says it's important to say why we have these values and provide more detail about our connection to these values.

He says repetition is an important key to getting the message out. The conservatives do it; he says there's nothing wrong with doing the same.

He ends with another technique to reframe the reframe: use positive words to respond (i.e., do not negate what they say because then we are using their words).

Example: 'we are not safer (in response to Dubya's assertions that we are safer)' is not a good response since it uses their reframe. Much stronger is: More terrorists have been created...

All good stuff. I think we know these things intuitively but he's put it together in one place, and I'm glad to see he's trying to get his message out.