Why does this book scare the hell out of the media-cracy?

Posted by Guest Blogger at 11:28 AM on April 12, 2007.

Guest post by Pastor Dan; first appeared on Street Prophets.

Longer ago than I care to admit, I made my living as a temporary office drone.

One of the things you learn very quickly if you actually depend on temp work for a living -- if you're not just supplementing your spouse's income or saving up in the summer between college and grad school -- is how to make yourself useful. Somebody asks you to do something, and you do it, otherwise you don't get asked back the next time the secretary is on vacation. That's the way the system works.

Once I worked in a financial office -- we sold bonds, I think -- for a month or two. My cube was next to one belonging to a permanent employee. We supported different bosses, but I was given to understand that we were also expected to help one another with certain shared tasks. The biggest thing was a set of reports we had to send off daily. Not an uncommon set-up, and since I liked my co-worker, it wasn't exactly a burden.

The bosses liked me too and felt comfortable enough to leave me more or less in charge when the permanent person went on vacation.

But they also hired a temp to cover her desk. Not just any temp, mind you, but a Harvard graduate who was just there to kill some time before The Next Big Thing in her life. This Harvard graduate proceeded to spend all her time on the phone complaining to her friends about how boring and demeaning her job was, and how she couldn't wait to get on to The Next Big Thing, whatever that was. Once, after listening to her gas on for forty-five minutes about being bored, I suggested to her that I could show her how to configure the reports, which were stacking up in her inbox.

"Dan, with all due respect," she said. "I'm not stupid. I went to Harvard."

At the end of her week there, she hadn't ...

... sent in a single report, and we got her fired from the temp agency.

What do you suppose could have made me think of that story in regards to Jeffrey Feldman's corker of a book Framing the Debate?

I do have to admit being a bit biased in this case. I've known Jeffrey for almost three years now -- he's a sometime front-pager at Street Prophets -- and I have never known him to be anything less than a mensch and an astute political scientist. He spoke at the Yearly Kos Interfaith Worship Service last year, and cracked up the crowd by teaching us the Hebrew for "Next year in Las Vegas!"

He's also more than able to refute unfair criticism, of which he's received more than his fair share. So, in keeping with his wishes, I'll let him handle that, and focus instead on the book itself.

It is indeed a great book. Typically, when I read about contemporary politics, I come away feeling better-informed. But after digesting Framing the Debate, I actually feel smarter. Without slighting Jeffrey, I think that is a testament not to the complexity of the ideas -- they're straightforward enough -- but to his abilities as a teacher. Feldman's purpose is exactly to strengthen the average citizen's understanding of how political speech is constructed, in the hopes that they will be more independent, more thoughtful hearers of the word. More to the point, they should be better able to produce their own frames and to respond to and take control of the frames being launched all around them. The average reader should walk away feeling empowered by Framing the Debate to participate in the political process. That's exactly why it will come under withering fire from elitists dubious of populism. The wankers are skeptical of the cattle and their ability to evaluate what they're being told. Feldman challenges those assumptions, and that's going to be a problem.

In fact, my one enduring criticism of this book is that it could have gone even further in exploring how to identify and evaluate the frame of any given speech. I think Jeffrey assumed that this would come across in his examinations of various presidential speeches, but I'd suggest an expansion of his chapter "Framers and Framing".

I was struck overall by how nervy the presidential speeches were, how willing they were to speak in moral terms and trust that their audiences could meet them on that level. Contrary to popular opinion these days, that's not a lost art. Feldman selects important addresses by Bill Clinton and Mr. Misunderestimated himself to demonstrate that even our latter-day bully pulpits are filled with moral dialectic.

Along those lines, Feldman's discussion of faith at the conclusion of his book is enlightening:

Over the past decade, conservatives have reframed the idea of "faith" in narrow terms having to do with specific forms of spiritual belief and religious dogma. Individuals can and should always be free to decide for themselves the meaning of spirituality. The more important principles, however, that have been lost in the narrow religious frame has been "faith" in the guarantee of free fair elections, "faith" in our system of governance, and "faith" in the Constitution. The massive voter fraud scandals of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, coupled with the rise of a vast network of corporate influence in Washington, D.C. has shaken the faith Americans once had in our electoral and representative system. It was not until the 2006 midterm elections that this faith began to be restored, although plenty of voting districts were still fraught with problems. From within this frame of lost "faith," it is no surprise that the introduction of so-called "eVote" computerized and paperless balloting systems is often met with such widespread skepticism.

A progressive policy on fair elections, therefore, should not begin by choosing an upper limit for individual campaign donations or the best machine for voting, but by promising to restore the public's "faith" in our constitutional process…

This is Framing the Debate in essence: smart, familiar with theory and current events, yet transcending them in the interest of articulating progressive moral principles.

Again, it should come as no surprise that this project should draw a sharply negative reaction from the wankerocracy. Part of what sustains our political and media elites is the illusion that there is no moral frame. They have so bought into a single, shared perspective, in other words, that it has become transparent to them. They can no longer critique it or step outside it. Framing the Debate is an implicit challenge to the elite system because it assumes in the grand tradition of Whitmanesque democracy that the people are capable of articulating their own values and pushing them forward.

There has always been a tension in American moral thought between the (often liberal) intellectual leaders and the populist masses. The intellectual assumption has often been that elites are needed to restrain the masses, and that true progress is the result of consensus among leaders. That consensus cannot be reached without consensus on core values. Atrios likes to make fun of "High Broderism," but the tendency goes back much further, to Walter Lippmann or H.L. Mencken and before. The populist assumption, on the other hand, is that a multiplicity of voices -- particularly outside the boundaries of elite discourse -- strengthens the conversation and ensures democratic representation. Framing the Debate comes down squarely on this side. Feldman clearly believes that American mores are formed as much at the kitchen table if not more so than in the seminar rooms. That goes beyond simple dirty fucking hippie blogging into deep waters of our democracy. I'm sure Jeffrey is enough of a student of history to remember the partisan press of the mid-1800s and how it drove a vital (if often rude and sometimes downright violent) moral and political discourse. The elite discourse in America today, by contrast, has become as lazy as some of the elite's work ethic. Some prodding is needed to remind the elites that the right intellectual pedigree and good connections inherited from Mom and Dad will not suffice for leadership.  Framing the Debate wants to take us back to those days when Americans decided for themselves what they believed and what they valued, and for that Feldman is to be commended.

One last, personal, note demonstrates I think the potential of Framing the Debate. Many people outside the church assume, wrongly, that preachers communicate pre-approved moral frames in their sermons. In fact we are often painfully aware of the multiple frames that can be applied to even the simplest excerpt from scripture. Part of the job of the pastor is to select one of those frames and lift it up for the congregation. Often, that meets them where they are -- in other words, it reinterprets what they already believe -- but sometimes it requires the preacher to move his or her audience outside their comfort zone to consider new frames. In that, we're no different than politicians asking their hearers to think in new ways.

But after reading Framing the Debate, I am more sharply aware than ever that the "metaphors by which we live" -- by which we organize and structure our thoughts -- are at heart moral decisions. They're little judgment calls sprinkled throughout our communications with one another: we approve of this way of thinking, we disapprove of that one.

And such is the power of this little book that I feel compelled to translate as much of it as I can for my congregation, to make them better consumers not just of political discourse but of religious discourse as well. They are certainly capable of understanding and evaluating the frames of scripture, and I am eager to help them discern them. Framing the Debate makes that possible much more directly, and for that, I will have to credit Dr. Feldman at my next Bible study.

Blogs can save your democracy and your soul. Who knew?

Tagged as: media, books, framing

Pastor Dan blogs at Street Prophets.