SEMANTIC FRAMING-- Frank Luntz

[+] Jeffrey Feldman reviews Frank Luntz.

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When Luntz talks about "words that work," he means the words used in a con game to trick your mark. Like any grifter, Luntz has an objective in mind when he starts, such as to give American heritage lands to oil companies. Obviously, the only people who want to see that objective achieved are the oil companies and the politicians put in office by oil companies. Everybody else in American is opposed to this idea. So, they hire Luntz to find the words that can be used to run a con game on the American public--to convince them to do the very thing they do not want to do by placing the harmful policy inside an elaborate game, a show, a performance
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The con game is always the same for Luntz: Find the words that make the Republican grift succeed on the public. It is all an act, Luntz' so called "listening." In his focus groups, his dial sessions, Luntz is not listening at all. He is looking for weakness. What are those words that turn people against themselves, that con people into acting against their own self-interest? What are the words that make greed work and community concern fail? In Luntz' work, the Republican agenda is always the objective, the best interests of the public are always being undermined.
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Progressive framing would never for a second begin with this artifice that Luntz cloaks himself in. At no point does anyone claim that progressive framing is about some false concept of impartiality. The Constitution of the United States was not arrived at by focus groups, but by honest conversation and open debate.
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MY COMMMENT-- More on this later-- I'm currently reading Words that Work.

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The involvement of the public in Luntz work, in other words, is not at the level of participation, but at the level of laboratory observation. The public is a resource of lab rats for Frank Luntz.
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Progressive framing is based on an entirely different premise. It is rooted in the principle of political participation. Progressive framing does not develop words behind closed laboratory doors then spring them on the public. The goal of progressive framing is to involve more and more people in the conversation, to bring more and more people into the political debate.
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Progressive framing, arguably, is just at the beginning of connecting our efforts to the vast stretch of American heritage. But were are there and the difference is striking.
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