Opinions Worth Roping -

THE FILM “HOW TO RAISE A CROP OF CITIZENS”:
[printable]

PART ONE: How to Write the Script

“Reframing” has become quite in vogue in the last year with the continuing series “Desperate Democrats”. Rather than choosing the charismatic candidate of conviction, The Guy With the Hair, or his darker twin, The Angry Guy to lead our party, the powers that be, wanted a Washington insider and chose instead, the Granite Guy. They assured each other that all that they had to do was “reframe” the issues. They believed that they could talk independents and moderate Republicans into being truly compassionate in the nurturant family model that Professor George Lakoff writes about in his book “Moral Politics”. Trouble was, for the majority of Americans, they like the strict father model that Lakoff says defines a conservative world view. And this majority looks at the “nurturants” as “touchy feely do-gooder wimps.

I enjoy reframing issues and always have. For me it started long before Prof. Lakoff’s linquistic foray into political discourse. Having spent my life outside of organizations by making a living in the hi-brow world of theatre, middle brow world of political comedy, and the whacky world of film and television; my friends and I were never subjected to the mind numbing language of management-speak and the weasel behavior that accompanies it. We loved playing with words, making fun of pomposity, and standing cliches on their heads. It wasn’t until last year when I decided to become a political activist that I experienced my first “Powerpoint presentation” and understood the term “Death by Powerpoint” that I had read about on the internet and from my sisters who worked in big corporations. I now understood why my sisters were devoted to Scott Adam’s “Dilbert” cartoon and his book “Way of the Weasel”.

I’ve added to my list of language study Mark Crispin Miller’s “Bush Dyslexicon”, Paul Waldman’s “”Fraud”, David Callahan “The Cheating Culture”, James Surowieki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds” and my new favorite Don Watson’s “Death Sentences: How Cliches, Weasel Words, and Management-Speak are Strangling Public Language.” Yes, we have to reframe, but we also need to bring back eloquence, according to Watson, an Australian political satirist and political speechwriter.

The desire to communicate richly has to be resurrected. We have to bring back a love of words and their power to actually make us tingle. Words are found in literature and literature contains the stories of people. We must read and read and read. Our future leaders need strong grounding in those stories, too. These leaders need to read Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Emerson, and the Greeks. While we’re at it, leaders must elevate geography over statistics and history over polls. And not just leaders, but every citizen, in order to defend the democracy, should take words seriously. Learning to read, Mark Danner recently told English major graduates at Berkeley, teaches you “how to question” and “how to doubt”. Study of the Humanities leads one to develop “moral imagination” which takes precedence over “economic justification for being”: who are you versus what do you do?

Words in public language have become dead. But in the recent testimony of George Galloway, the British Parliamentarian, that tore Senator Norm Coleman several new pie holes, we applauded not only the substance of his speech denouncing the committee as a smokescreen for the illegal behavior of American companies in Iraq, but also it’s eloquence and power. It came from old-fashioned oratory. It had rhythm without being sing-song. It had power without once raising the volume. And it had the beautiful purr of the Scottish Gaelic that thrills the ear.

Words have taken a back seat to visual images. The sound department on a movie set is a step child. The script has been replaced as the star of the movie by visuals. So politicians too think that a well-turned phrase like “Leave No Child Left Behind” or “Healthy Forests” or “ Social Insecurity” is all they need to do. They figure that the press and the pundits will repeat these phrases ad nauseam while flashing pictures of a courageous fearless leader with a waving flag behind him or her. Why speak when you have a lapel pin on and an adopted embryo in your arms?

But there is some good news. There is a stirring in the land. Why did the philosopher Harry Frankfurter recently publish his essay “Bullshit?” Why is the comedian Lewis Black and Jon Stewart’s Daily Show so hugely popular now? Why is Fox News’ viewership down and Rush Limbaugh losing out to Ed Schultz and Al Franken? Why did Brian Schweitzer win here in Montana? Could it be that here on the plains like a hundred years ago there is a growing sense from the grass roots that it’s time for the people to take back the reins and slow up the runaway horses of corporate greed, lazy news, government propaganda, and general weaselness?

But if we are to take our country of the people and by the people back, how do we begin?

As much as we would like to go about our merry way and leave governing to our leaders and keep our fingers crossed, we’ve now discovered that just won’t work anymore and that Jefferson was right when he said that “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” But does vigilance have to be all work and no play? How do we begin? First, we need to find like minded folks.

If we want to work with Lakoff’s family model for our world, what kind of family are we or do we want to be? I say, “Whatever” as long as we can get rid of the baloney. Instead of bottom up or top down, maybe sideways is the answer. The Union movement started with words like “The Brotherhood”. The women’s movement embraced “Sisterhood”, Mr. Rogers had his “Neighborhood”, and South LA has “the Hood”. How about we pair civic and civility; and politic and polite. Maybe we should try using words to coax rather than knock on the head. While we are at it, we should dust off the word “social”. I went to Ice Cream Socials when I was young and my sisters and I sang songs from “The Sound of Music” (badly I might add.) But when did “social” become “socialism” and when did “socialism” get mixed up with ‘communism”? Let’s explore what words mean before we hurl them at our neighbors.

And while we’re at it, where is our labor music? Where are our Guthries and Dylans? Thank goodness we have Bruce Springsteen to speak about the lives of working stiffs and to sing the praises of labor. What about the old cowboy songs? When did “Happy Trails to You “ turn into “My Way or the Highway?” We’ve got folk music happening right here in Bozeman and Big Timber. Judy Fjell writes powerful protest songs. Let’s embrace our community music at the same time we listen to world music. And let’s make the connection. Sister cities shouldn’t just be a photo op, but a real reaching out.

PART TWO: CASTING THE LEAD

We need leadership just like a dog team needs the lead dog and a movie needs a leading actor. But the leader should lead by a consensus from the people. The people are the producers and democracy is the script. Arthur Miller once remarked when we picked Nixon over McGovern that we want in our political leader “just “enough larceny, enough insensitivity to permit him to do our dirty work…to fight dirty in a dirty world.” That also sounds like the reason seemingly “nice” actors pick a shark as an agent. Miller reasoned that why we did this was because “we are far more apprehensive than we are confident of ourselves.” If that is true, then psychology needs to be studied too.

I once read that Freud was the psychologist of the 20 th Century and Carl Jung would be the psychologist of the 21 st. Carl Jung who came up with the “collective unconscious” by studying myths and religions around the world, was embraced by the great historian, Joseph Campbell, who in turn was embraced by George Lucas. We might just have to look deep in ourselves and ask the really hard questions. The dark side is there. We need to talk about that, too. Jesus whittled the commandments down to two. Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, thy soul, and thy mind (Yeh, that’s right, guys, the mind). The second like unto it is this, “To Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself”. In order to love thy neighbor, you need to love yourself. And we all know how tricky that can be. That’s why so many people believe in reincarnation. Gives you more time to get it right. Now the way I’ve figured out how to love yourself is by constantly exploring who you are and growing in that knowledge of both your strengths and your dark shadow side which is a part of you too. I call it “my inner froggie” after Froggie the Gremlin who did evil things to grown ups in a 1950’s TV show. Others call it “their evil twin”.

Look around you to those who can inspire and can put in simple terms the great issues of the day without resorting to the dead words of management speak. Read The Gettysburg Address. Look at Mark Twain who advised speakers to “kill” the adjective. Well, most of them, anyway. “An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice,” he wrote.

Leaders take all the ideas swirling around them and put them into one large vision. Look for leaders who have a vision, not a laundry list. Look for leaders who will do the spade work i.e. the hard work. If we had done “the spade work” in Iraq , as John Edwards said, we wouldn’t be in the pickle we are in now. If pharmaceutical companies go back to doing the spade work i.e. research and development, we’ll find cures, not just more medicine to relieve the pain. When politicians roll up their sleeves and make things work instead of talking about procedure, we can move forward instead of spinning our wheels in the barrow pit of partisan politics.

Eric Alterman wrote yet another great piece in the December 27, 2004 “Nation” called “Big Ideas Need Sharp Elbows”. In it he talks about a recent gathering in New York City to honor John Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. for their large contributions to what the historian Kevin Mattson terms a “fighting faith”, a “tough-minded realism” that battled in the political world, “a world of messy compromise and inevitable failures.” Alterman felt that Bill Moyers best summed up their impact. Moyers said ‘Ken Galbraith and Arthur Schlesinger engaged in the passions of our times and brought to the liberal project the fire of deep conviction, the gravity of fierce intellect and the temperament of the tested warrior of ideas who accepts that the achievable is possible while the perfect can only be imagined…The hopes of common people rest not with saints but with flawed champions who understand that in a world where bad ideas wear brass knuckles, big ideas need sharp elbows.” Seems to me that statement makes a fine blue print for picking out leaders.

Maybe our study of good government should be part of a “Fine Arts Department”. I recently met a teacher in the “Fine Arts” department that wrinkled her nose at the mention of my field of “Film Studies”. “Oh, we are not connected,” she sniffed. And therein lies the rub for me, my enduring problem with specialists and their blinkers. I am constantly seeing similarities where others see differences. Jungian psychology says that I am, by nature, a generalist, and so I loved my training at a Liberal Arts College with its emphasis on teaching its students how to think, not what to think. Under the blanket of a “Education” degree, I specialized in two similar fields, psychology and theatre. (One of my favorite directors, Alan J. Pakula, was a Psych major and felt it was a natural fit to take the study of human nature into filmmaking;“Klute” and “Sophie’s Choice” spring to mind as examples.) That is my prejudice, I confess. And on the other hand, without the specialists, I couldn’t back up any of my theories. There’s a place for both, but just be careful that you can tell the difference. Political Science Departments are churning out young people who have no desire to serve in office, but rather make a buck in telling leaders what to do. “Consultants” are sometimes geniuses, but more often are bottom feeders.

So, go out there and find leaders that put country, state, and town over party. They’re out there. Like a Bernie Sanders, who describes himself, unapologetically, as a socialist. My guess is that he does it to get people to think for a change. What he means is that he is an “economic populist”. He fights for working class issues and trounces his Republican opponents in very red precincts in Vermont as well as the blue ones. In the last election here in Montana, Tracy Velasquez ran for the U.S. House. Never once did I think that she would ever vote “party line” once she got to Washington. I liked her because of her good heart, quick mind, and her fierce determination to put the people of Montana before party. We went to every county and she has a wealth of stories that she wrangled.

Put money limits on those people in Washington instead of term limits. If they make more than, say a half a million, while serving the public, it’s time for them to either retire, stop making money “under the table”, or put the excess into a state fund for all of us to share. Now that’s the kind of Capitalistic Communism that stirs the soul.

Make them meet you in the towns and talk eyeball to eyeball. Send them letters instead of reading theirs with their money requests. Pressure your local papers and TV and Radio Stations to give them free air time and limit the campaigns to a couple of months. Demand more information from the media. Remember what James Madison said, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” Paul Waldman in his invaluable book “Fraud” warns that George Bush and Company know that quote only to well and have determined that most of the government’s business isn’t our business. It’s time to take the airwaves back again.

PART THREE: SELLING YOUR MOVIE: HOW TO THINK LIKE AN ELEPHANT AND TALK TO IT, IF YOU MUST. BUT AREN’T THERE OTHER ANIMALS YOU CAN BOND WITH?

#1: ANSWER EVERYTHING WITH YES.

I used this approach last year when I worked on the Edwards campaign. When people came up with negatives for John, I would simply answer, Yes, Mam, or Yes, Sir, he is young. That’s why I like him. He was too young to go to Vietnam so he doesn’t carry all that baggage. I don’t want to fight that war all over again. Besides JFK was 43 and Edwards is 51.

Yes, Sir, he’s a smooth talking trial lawyer and a darn good one. Don’t you think that’s what we might need right now? Somebody to smooth talk our way out of trouble instead of blast our way out? Wasn’t that Republican, Abe Lincoln, a trial lawyer. And what about that guy in “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Aticus Finch. What’s not to like about Gregory Peck?

He hasn’t been in Washington long enough. “Yes, Mam and thank goodness, I say. He was there long enough to smell the stink, though, like our Governor here says.

What’s wrong with wicked smart too? He met Mubarak of Pakistan and came out of that short meeting saying that we need to give the Pakistanis schools not weapons. We need to get those bowing and nodding kids out of the Madrasahs and into regular schools where they can learn to read on their own instead of repeating phrases given to them by right wing fanatics. Whoa, sounds like something we’ve got going here with the whole assault on public schools and the growing right wing home school movement.

LET’TRY IT WITH SOME OTHER TOPICS;

LIBERAL ELITISM:

Thomas Frank in “What’ the Matter With Kansas” has gone back to a theme of Arthur Schlesinger Jr’s. In 1953, Schlesinger wrote, “Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the businessman.” Waldman says that means “that those at the top of the heap use intellectuals as a scapegoat to distract people from the societal inequities that actually affect their lives; those of wealth and power. Intellectuals are posited as both sinister and powerful, conspiratorially undermining the values of ordinary people.” “Fine” I say, “Anybody that read books are elitists. Fine. And sinister? Okay, that too. That’s why I call myself and my co-hosts of “Citizens Voices”, the Feral Cats of Freedom. If they are going to paint us as that, then let’s become that. Let’s become the underground movement that attempts not to limit the circle of knowledge, but to widen the circle of this so-called elitism. Let’s call their bluff. Let’s make everybody smarter. “I am Smartacus”, “I am Smartacus” . “We are all Smartacus.” Ah hah. Gotcha Karl.

Now, let’s go out and like Mary Elizabeth Lease said over a hundred years ago, “Let’s raise less corn and more hell!”

How To Raise a Crop of Citizens