Last night The Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee did a great interview with Frank Luntz. Frank Luntz is the conservative answer to George Lakoff. As Samantha Bee put it, Luntz has had "a brilliant career spraying perfume on dog turds." Bee asked Luntz to provide his version of several phrases:
- "drilling for oil" --> "responsible exploration for energy"
- "logging" --> "healthy forests"
- "manipulation --> "explanation and education"
I'm surprised he answered that last one. For more humorous background on Luntz, see Luntzspeak.com.
The interview with Luntz followed a skit that Samantha Bee did on how the administration puts together "town hall meetings" for maximum PR effect. The key point of the skit was that they carefully screen everyone in the audience to make sure they are all sympathetic to what the president has to say. When Bee asked Luntz why the meetings couldn't be open to the public, Luntz said something to the effect of, "You can't just open these things up to anyone. That would lead to chaos."
This piece was on the Comedy Central website for awhile, but they seem to have taken it down now.
This is a good list of Luntzisms, but you've just scraped the surface.
We've documented some Luntzisms on a blog we've developed that is designed as a sort of "countermemo" to his spin. Check out our suggestions at
climatememo.blogspot.com
D & C
FYI: The transcript of "Hall of Same" segment, with commentary thereafter, is available at JABBS (http://jabbs.blogspot.com)
If you've ever wanted to read the linguistics bible of conservatives, written by Frank Luntz himself, you can find text-searchable versions here:
http://www.politicalstrategy.org/archives/001185.php