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Straws in the wind?

By Michael J. Smith on Wednesday May 28, 2008 06:14 PM

Coincidentally, Al Schumann noted the long-overdue demise of George Lakoff's tiresome "framing" cult at the the same time I was marvelling about the apparent decline of the Kosnik cult.

They are, of course, both victims of the Democratic Party's success -- not their own success, I hasten to add, which has been zilch apart from obtaining some modest notoriety for their respective caudillos.

What has happened is that the Democrats have shifted into general-election gear. So any efforts that the institutional party, or its nominee-apparent, will make from now on are going to the other leg of the triangle -- the possibly wavering angry white guys. (And the Miami Cubans). Lakoff and Kos have both tattooed on their foreheads the motto "We Have Nowhere Else To Go", and so they will get the treatment doormats usually get.

This is routine, of course -- it's what "triangulation" means. What's slightly more interesting is that the base, I bet, has abandoned the Lakoffs and the Kos-es just as the institution has. Rooting for a candidate -- usually Barack, of course, for people in the Lakoff/Kos ambit -- has absorbed all the energy, and probably all the money, of the earnest folk whose warm panting breath formerly kept Lakoff and Kos aloft. It will be interesting to see how many Kosniks make the pilgrimage to Texas for this year's chatterfest, as compared with '06 and '07.

It was always clear -- to some of us anyway -- that adherence to the dire old deadly Democratic Party meant that Lakoff and Kos had ensured their own irrelevance. What I, at least, hadn't quite figured out was that they had also ensured their own extinction as soon as they had served their modest function.

Success is within reach. Time to liquidate the Useful Idiots(*).

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(*) I bought the capital letters cheap, at a Lakoff fire sale, and now I gotta use 'em up.

Comments (3)

Al Schumann:

I think they'll manage to leverage irrelevance and extinction into paying gigs for punditry. Certainly Lakoff will, and he's a got a fallback if he needs it. Kos will have to unlearn some bad habits and acquire some socialization. Needs must and all. Otherwise his Internet Progressive, poor man's Edward G. Robinson schtick is over.

Kos can just go back to peddling "adult" websites. Isn't that how he started out ?

I've started a small side-industry for myself. Upon encountering an Obama fan, I seek out wagers regarding health insurance and Iraq withdrawal. If BO makes the WH, I expect to make enough extra cash to attend the Net Roots '13 Convention, when they reconvene to publicize how badly we need to rally 'round Hillary's party to fix what President Romney has broken...

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