Wednesday, July 13, 2011

THE RIGHT FRAMING AGAIN

I noticed that even the NPR news reporters keep saying the difference in the debt ceiling/budget fight between Democrats and Republicans (by the way those two issues were always separate until the Republicans decided to tie them together) is that Republicans want to "cut spending" and Dems "raise taxes."

Which, of course, is a lie. The Democrats want to cut spending, and have offered cuts three times the amount of revenue they want to raise by raising taxes on the richest few to what they were at the beginning of the last Republican administration's tenure. But all the Republicans are willing to do is cut spending on programs that impact poor and working people without even being willing to cut tax loopholes for oil companies that get subsidies from the government despite record profits and tax corporate jets which aren't taxed now because Republicans have been doing their best over the last several decades to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Just one statistic is that real wages for almost all of us have either remained the same or GONE DOWN since the 1970s, but corporate CEO salaries have gone up over sixty per cent! But the right has framed the public discussion so well that even the "liberals" over at NPR make the simplistic and incorrect division between Republicans cutting spending and Democrats raising taxes, an obvious and glaring misrepresentation of the two main parties' positions.

And to add to the rightwing framing, even NPR now calls the president "Mister Obama" after referring to him once as "President Obama." The right tried making that the standard under Clinton because they choked on calling him president because rightwingers don't believe in democracy but in ideology. No one ever called President Eisenhower "Mister" when he was in office. Just more proof that the rightwing strategy of denigrating teachers and public school systems in order to make the electorate less able to use reason and logic to understand political issues is working.

10 comments:

Loyeen said...

Lally,

I could not agree more with your post. I find it very disrespectful when I hear "Mister Obama" and not "President Obama." He is still our president. And if you do not think he is move to a different country. Thanks-Loyeen

-K- said...

I really don't know what to make of a world where the Republican's patron saint, Ronald Reaagan, would now be considered too liberal.

(Although their standards might change a tiny bit were one of their own in the White House.)

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

So sad, dissapointing and blatantly hypocritical. Such disrespect for our President, elected by Constitutional standards and a living example of "all men are created equal." Shame. I'm with Loyeen. Jim should move to another country.

JIm said...
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JIm said...
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Robert G. Zuckerman said...

It was Loyeen's idea that those who don't respect our President enough to refer to him properly leave the country.

JIm said...
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Loyeen said...

Robert,

I did not appreciate or agree with our last president but he was still our president. I have a problem with the disrespect.

sstempserve said...

Actually, it is protocol to refer to the president the first time as "President" and thereafter as "Mr." It was done all throughout the Bush administration as well, and further back then that. It has nothing to do with Obama or disrespect. Seriously, there are far larger problems at hand no?

Lally said...

I know when I was younger the only time "Mister" was used in relation to the president was when they said "Mister President." And you're correct "sstempserve" that there are larger problems. But it's symptomatic of the right's prolonged (at least since the '50s) attempt to reframe pretty much everything in the life of the country in terms that favor their perspective. Like the way they call the Democratic Party, "the Democrat Party" because from the perspective they're pushing, saying "Democratic" makes it seem like Democrats believe in Democracy more etc. (which, in terms of small r republicanism versus small d democracy is in a way correct). Democrats don't say "The Republic Party" etc. So these small things add up to contribute more than it seems to the overall discussion.