We might not be having these nuanced debates about framing if there was a robust movement for worker's rights. Most of the push towards improvements in the organizing procedures come from labor leaders, not from the general public.

Either workers are too cowed to demonstrate, or are too depressed to have any hope, or are not suffering enough to be taking to the streets. Whatever it is you can't have a mass movement without the masses.

I think labor leaders need to figure out why they aren't getting the traction from the public lest their newly granted organizing rights turn out to be ineffective anyway.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

Well, I'm not going to get into a pissing match with you about this. You said pretty much the same thing I did, and reworded it. I think that's obvious to anyone who reads both posts. I thought an acknowledgement would have been the right thing to do. JMO.

I was actually never that in favor of PC speech codes;  I just hated all the privileged conservatives acting like such martyrs in response.

And of course you want to figure out why people dislike unions.  Partly, the explanation is that if unions are even partly successful in wresting some power from management, they inherently inherit some of the gripes normally aimed at management over work conditions.   But there's also a lot of propaganda effort to divert those gripes at the unions.

Take teachers unions-- because they've had some success in controlling work conditions, they become an easy scapegoat for problems in the schools.  Yet no one usually even mentions that the same problems, usually worse, exist in southern states where teachers have no collective bargaining rights.  So the "framing" does end up playing a bigger role in the discussion.

Of course-- and I've said this a number of times-- some individual union leaders have sucked and done things that deserve to be attacked and condemned.  But the question remains why those bad union leaders get held up as representative rather than the many good leaders fighting on behalf of their members.  Again, which union leaders get help up by the media as "typical" is part of the propaganda game.

Really? I think "our side" basically won. When's the last time anyone in your office was stupid enough to make sexist, racist, homophobic coments about co-workers? (Outloud)

Making those kinds of comments socially unacceptable has gone a long way to making the behavior unacceptable too. It isn't perfect, it is often taken to extremes, but it has forced people to stop and consider what they say, before they say it.

That whole "PC" debate? Our side basically lost it. In a way, it changed language a bit, in some lasting ways...

I'm not sure you are right about this.  Sure the mockery was there, and not all unwarranted.  But wasn't the whole point to change language a bit? It seems to me that the changes are small, when looked at linguistically, but not at all trivial when looked at politically.  When I go back and look at language use 20 years ago, I think the differences are there and that they do matter.

As for South Park, that was inevitable - any time there is a consensus around language use and culture, there is a subversive reaction.  Except when it's not, that's one of the beautiful things about humankind. 

I think many of the commenters here are acting as though this "framing" (or "politcal correctness") issue is solely an obsession of the left blogosphere. In fact, as some here have alluded, the right is almost fanatic in its devotion to using exactly the correct, most focus-group tested language at all times. I've heard stories of informal meetings of College Republicans in which members were shouted down for using phrases that were declared off-limits by the higher-ups (these weren't offensive words or anything, dust the incorrect way of referring to welfare reform legislation or something like that). I don't doubt that this exacting attention to detail is an important key to their political success.

I can't imagine liberals could ever enforce this kind of message discipline -- or even agree on pizza toppings at the meetings where we'd discuss it -- but it's silly to imagine that the words we use are unimportant.

Nathan

I've have a concern about what I perceive as the "politics of purity" among some (many?) self-proclaimed "progressives" who comment on the blogs. Take the issue of gun control. Big hot button issue among some progressives, I think. But here in Minnesota, almost everyone of our state DFL legislators from the Iron Range has been endorsed by ARA. In many ways, the Iron Range is the heart and social of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party and, in fact, might represent the "L" of the DFL. (It labor history is steeped in the IWW movement and was instrumental in the success of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.) If my memory serves me, Wellstone was able to win because he carried the Iron Range with an overwhelming majority. I never thought of these "gun toting" iron rangers w supporters of Wellstone as particularly "anti-progressive". In fact, one candidate for the Minnesota House from the "gun country" who ran on "wobbly" gun platform was targeted for support by Progressive Minnesota (an independent political organization found on principles of social and economic justice -- the organization has recently merged with another progressive organization). My impression is that too many of the Koss crowd would be too "pure" have much respect for our "progressive gun toters" and might have a hard time with a Progressive Minnesota. This is just an impression

PS Nathan, you might enjoy a very interesting book entitled By the Ore Docks, A Working People's History of Duluth (U of MN Press) written by Richard Hudeslson (U of Wisc. Superior) and the late Carl Ross (1913-2004. Ross was a labor activists and the author of The Finn Factor in American Labor, Culture, and Society. He was director of the Twentieth-Century Radicalism in Minnesota Project of the Minnesota History Society. From about 1927 to 1957, he was an active member of the American Communist Party. (From the perspective of some, he was not always "political correct".) Neither am I.

Stephen from Minneapolis

From a pragmatic political view, I completely agree with you that gun control is a loser issue as a litmus test among progressives.  If a politician's district is pro-gun control and he or she wants to run on the issue, more power to them, but I will happily embrace NRA-types who are good on the rest of the progressive issues.

On the policy side, my view is that since we can't ban all guns as many European countries do, all the partial bans are pretty damn useless, since criminals can and do go shopping in the states with the weakest gun controls and ship them to those with stronger laws.  And even a national law couldn't get all the existing guns off the streets, so gun control is generally trading an almost-doomed-to-failure policy in exchange for losing a lot of voters who would normally support us.

I will have to check out the books you recommended.

.  .  .  it's still odd to me  .  .  .  .

Welcome to the post-modern world, Ed! 

since they find that bashing public schools themselves are ultimately a political loser.

and yet, don't you think that the crowd in power these days really DOESN'T want a substantial portion of the populace to be well-educated? 

What a racket.  Starve the schools, using phony rhetoric of competition and bash the teachers for the failure - which, although they'll never admit it, is exactly their desired outcome?  What is the point of having too many well-educated people when there aren't going to be enough jobs for them anyway?

Yup, you can almost hear Bush's inner monologue: "Those teachers gave me Cs but now I'm the pursident. hehheheheh."

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