The Power of Frames

September 12, 2008 · Posted in Barack Obama, Election 2008 

My mom sent me this last night, and I love the way it compare and contrasts the way the media and the campaigns have framed the people.  Here we go…

I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..

  • If you grow up in Hawaii , raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”
  • Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.
  • If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
  • Name your kids Willow , Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.
  • Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
  • Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.
  • If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
  • If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive and next in line behind a man in his eighth decade.
  • If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
  • If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and then left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a true Christian.
  • If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
  • If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.
  • If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America ’s.
  • If you’re husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

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Comments

  • Carl S.
    Let's not let "them" frame our conversation: we're comparing a presidential candidate with the opposing VP pick. She has been on display for two weeks, not two years. Any one who heard her stammer on about going to war with Russia over a pseudo NATO member, with the same tone and timbre with which she explained a bridge to nowhere, should have a grasp of who put the lipstick on what. Or is that sexist?

    Then again, I didn't vote 'til I was 26, don't have a college education, should have had a DWI, and belonged to a group that advocated the secession of Northern Ireland from Britain.
  • No argument from me. My point was to illustrate the absurdity of the framing.

    What drives me craziest is how willing the press is to accept rather than mock them.
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