Aug
9
2006

URLs du Jour

2006-08-09

  • We kind of like looking at the interaction of language and politics here at Pun Salad. One of the more popular themes of the past few years has been that of Berkeley's George Lakoff who contends that Republicans are particularly good at "framing" issues: for example, talking about tax cutting as "tax relief", thereby placing their opponents in the unenviable position of being anti-relief. (Um, which they are. Sorry, George.)

    Although he doesn't mention Lakoff, Fred Barnes has a pretty good counterpoint to that argument at the Weekly Standard. Basically: liberals are, and have always been, pretty active in that game as well.

    At the local level, liberals often go by a different name. They are "activists." Again, the media have helped popularize that word. So the folks who protest plans to build a Wal-Mart in their town or suburb are "activists." The people who oppose a zoning change to allow a church to be built are "activists." What about those who don't want an abortion clinic in their town? They're still conservatives.
    Lots of other examples too.

  • Guaranteed to put me in a poor temper is just about any article in Inside Higher Ed about student racial classification at colleges. This one is no exception.
    On Monday, the U.S. Education Department—following nearly nine years of study and planning—released draft guidance for colleges on how to change the way they collect and report information about students' race and ethnicity. The system proposed by the department would for the first time allow students to pick multiple boxes, with colleges reporting all of those who checked multiple boxes in a new "two or more races" category. In addition, the new system changes the way data will be gathered about Latino students and divides the "Asian and Pacific Islander" category into two distinct groups.
    Yes, it's Your Federal Government At Work, with multiple well-paid bureacrats in arduous labor for nine years to say: it's OK to ask your students if they consider themselves to be multi-racial.

    Hey, I think I could have come up with that all by myself in, oh, four years. Maybe five, if you want it spell-checked.

    The educrats' fervent hope is that this will cut down on the number of students who refuse to state their race, which has been growing over the past few years. Needless to say, there's almost nobody in the whole sorry endeavor who wants the government and colleges to get out of the Jim Crow business of pigeonholing students by their "race."

    If you want more Salad Screediness on this topic, it's right here.

  • Well, my wish for a Lieberman victory yesterday went unfulfilled. I'll live. Especially since Radley Balko reminds us why he wasn't that great (not that Lamont would be any improvement). And also especially since Dean Barnett has updated his Lamont/Lieberman FAQ. Including:
    Connecticut is not a great state; it's a mediocre state at best. No pro sports teams, its largest city is a cultural abyss and it's got Yale. And what kind of nickname is the Nutmeg State? Nutmeg is a spice, for crying out loud. Are there any other states that have chosen to name themselves after a spice? Would West Virginia consider calling itself the Garlic Powder State or Colorado the Cumin State?
    Well, Dean, Nevada is sometimes deemed the "Sage State". (Honest.) But as someone from the Granite State—named after a rock, for crying out loud—I'm hardly one to throw stones.

    Yes, that was almost kind of a pun here at Pun Salad; now you know why we don't do that too often.

  • People who aren't experts on anything will want to read Stephen Colbert's "How to be an Expert on Anything." Especially relevant to bloggers, methinks.