Let Granny Eat Grass

[Robbien]

Frank Luntz may call them "personal accounts," but we know better.

By Charles P. Pierce
Web Exclusive: 01.27.05

I'm following with some interest the argument about which adjective we're going to hang on the president's plans for Social Security. (I have yet to hear from the White House communications shop on my suggestion -- "The Let Granny Eat Grass Act Of 2005" -- and, I confess, I am not optimistic.) It appears that we journalists are failing in our important role as constitutionally sanctioned conveyor belts if we refer to the administration's schemes as "private accounts," now that all the people who believe in such accounts, like the president, have decided that they will use the word "personal" instead. Which also means that the words I've come to use to describe the notion -- "rat holes," say, or "Enron-bait" -- also are right out.

I heard this argument just the other day from Frank Luntz, who is famous for getting groups to say what he wants them to say by locking them in a room in Secaucus with nothing but a cheese platter and his own sunny presence. Frankly, I don't know why he hasn't been hauled away to The Hague for doing this, but that is not for small minds to ponder. Anyway, on the radio the other day, Luntz pointed out that anyone who still uses the word "private" in reference to the president's Social Security initiative is betraying a bias against the plan solely because the president is calling the proposed accounts "personal accounts" now and, therefore, we all should do so, too.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9109

[rodeodance]

1. I hope the Dems continue to use the term -private accounts

[patdem]

2. No, I think they should start calling it Goat Milk Fudge!

[ElectroPrincess]

3. Amazing, this bozo Frank Luntz has gotten so much air time

over the past four-five years, I have to wonder who he's related to (or bedding). What a pathetic PT Barnum type "I'll always sell out for a price" man. I'm so sick of seeing his deceitful mug on the TV.

[winston61]

4. what do we call the con this week?

First it's a crisis, then it's problem. First it's privitization, then it's personal. Oh my, so confusing. Well, as the old boy says, you can call a turd a tuberose, but it still smells like shit...

[optional]

5. This is genuinely bizarre

Let me see if I get this right... In the midst of a debate over a very doubtful piece of legislation, a Trojan horse meant to move SSI, the government and the US economy towards undisclosed goals with unidentified beneficiaries, the Bush administration's partisans declare that, since their researchers have found that "private accounts" don't evoke as much support as "personal accounts," the nation's media must change their terminology. It's all like al one of a high stakes poker game's players insisting on his right to stack the deck after he's seen the first couple cards -- it's obscene.
More obscene, however, are the kinds of assumptions and attitudes the administration's partisans' actions betray. If they really believe that the media should toe the line, they have, at least, odd notions of the role of the press in a democracy. Their apparent expectation that the people of this country will just set aside all they've heard before and just latch onto the debate's new terms betrays a contempt for their audience's ability to reason. And, what can I say about their disregard for the very real harm that privatization is likely to do to SSI's beneficiaries and the threat to our government's solvency that's likely to come with the borrowing that would be required to carry out their plan.