Frame This

George Lakoff, a distinguished professor at UCal Berkeley, claims in an article published today that some protestors at OWS had asked for his advice, and he waxes eloquent about properly framing the issue--with the purported goal of prevailing in the 2012 elections.

Lakoff clearly cannot see very well from the parapet of his ivory tower.

The OWS protest has exactly jack to do with any election anywhere--except as a wholesale rejection of that system.

See, George, we've tried elections, and regardless of whether "we" control both houses and the white house, or whether "they" do--illegal war, looting of the treasury, torture, rendition, assassination, wiretapping--all of it, not only continues unabated, but has only gotten worse under the current regime.

But I do see your point about framing the issue.  So I suggest that you, Professor George Lakoff of the University of California at Berkeley, immediately resign unless torture-memo author Professor John Yoo--(your esteemed colleague, paid and protected by tenure by the same organization) is fired immediately. (More on Yoo's allowable torture--it includes children's genitalia!--can be found here and here.)

Your trite "advice" in the article aside, the fact you have remained utterly silent on this abomination exposes you as ignorant and foolish at best--

Or complicit at worst.

Either way, your credibility takes a fatal hit.

Until you resign or Yoo does, then, shut the fuck up, eh?

In the meantime, I suggest you go down to the local #occupy gathering, and LISTEN.


I'll have more from our own Occupy Eugene later today.


Update 1:

To the critics who've written protesting my pillorying of Prof. Lakoff, saying, more or less, butbutbut Noam Chomsky works for MIT:

It is true that Lakoff and Chomsky have written extensively in what is generally a progressive vein. But Chomsky went out in the street and was bloodied alongside Howard Zinn. Chomsky had the fortitude to stand up and defend free speech when it was a holocaust denier speaking, because, as he eloquently noted: "If we don't believe in free speech for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

Chomsky acknowledges the futility of elections and the usurpation of the political process by corporations.

Lakoff just sucks off Democrats, wipes his mouth, and tells us the 2012 elections are important, after Obama proved unequivocally that Corporations rule.

As for what I've done, I don't think you want to get into a pissing match over who is "more authentic," which seems counter-productive, but for establishing cred purposes, I have spent twenty hours since Saturday as a legal observer for the local occupy movement, and I'm about to head back down there.

In any event, I don't think you can argue that Lakoff has written a syllable criticizing torture or his employer's overt support of it. Show me where, and I'll concede the argument.

My point is that Lakoff--and a whole host of nominally progressive writers, journalists, and teachers today--are stuck in the "Democrats are better than Republicans" paradigm.

I also humbly submit there are times when silence equals complicity; when your coworker takes the position that, should the president deem it necessary, he could have the testicles of a child crushed, it is, I think pretty goddamned obviously, one of those times.
Noam Chomsky never remained silent, knowing full well the damage he was doing to himself professionally. Watch "Manufacturing Consent"--it's free on the innertubes--and it'll clarify the distinction I make between Lakoff, who hasn't the courage of his alleged convictions, and Chomsky, who got his head busted and sucked Mace, and never went easy on MIT or the MIC...

I hope you are helping your local Occupy movement, cause electoral politics is the show they want us to watch.

We disempower them by making them irrelevant.