As anyone here who has ever been a child, had a child, pretended to be a child, or watched Julia Child knows (I think I covered everyone!), the phrase, "Yes, sir" can mean many things. For example, take the two following (fictitious and utterly hyperbolic) dialogs:
- Father: Son, here is some money, would you go buy yourself a present?
Son (beaming wildly): Yes, sir.
- Father: Son, you need to eat your spinach.
Son (rolling eyes and sneering): Yes, sir.
Now, obviously, these are hyperbolic examples, but the point is that in both cases, the son said the same words. Nonetheless, the meaning of what he said was very different. Indeed, odds are, the second example probably ended with the child being timed out for a while. But why? He said the same words! He said "Yes, sir"! The problem is, that it wasn't what he said, but how he said it, which got him into trouble.
Jeff Lieber has an excellent diary up on the Recommended List which has drawn some fire for criticizing the progressive movement for setting itself up as the "Far Left", and letting anger rule our communication. I don't want to repeat his diary, he doesn't need my help, but I want to expand on something important that people seemed to have missed: it is not what we want, but how we have presented it, that is our greatest foil.
Here on DKos, and in other places, we are well versed in the language of outrage. We have good reason to be. The last eight years have been an outrage. George Bush has been a disaster as a President, and our nation has suffered greatly at his hands. The problem is, the language of outrage is not the language of salesmanship.
That is what we want, isn't it? We want to be heard, to have people take critical action to address the crises and inequalities that run rampant in our nation. Right? Then we have to begin to speak the language of salesmanship.
Now, IANAM (I am not a marketer), but I've never seen an advertisement like this:
Salesman: WHY HAVEN'T YOU BOUGHT MY PRODUCT?! IT'S THE BEST PRODUCT OUT THERE, AND YOU'RE IN ITS PRIME MARKET! WHAT THE FECK IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU INSENSATE INVERTEBRATE DUNDERHEAD!
I exaggerate, of course, but my point is that salesmanship is not about outrage or accusation. If we attempt to sell progressive causes in the language of outrage, we will come across the same way as out fictitious salesman: no matter how good his product is, no one will buy it.
Our product is very good. We are selling some very important ideas. We have that advantage, and we are aware of it. But to sell it, we must change tactics. It is time to begin to take the role of the party no longer in the wilderness. The White House is held by a sympathetic ear, and our platform is one from which we are quite audible. Now, if ever, is our time to shift the Overton Window.
We aren't the bogeyman FAR LEFT that O'Reilly and his chorus of ditto-heads would have you believe. Sure, some of us are rather far left, but as a whole the policies we propose are not really so far out there. But we lend ourselves to the frame of the bogeyman when we let outrage rule our language.
I'm not talking about Rick Warren, although certainly he is an example. I'm not talking about Hillary Clinton, although our framing made it easy for fictitious opposition to be invented. I'm not even talking about Joe Lieberman. I'm talking about our whole method of presentation.
We must be forceful without outrage. We must be persuasive and calm, even when we are frustrated an angry. We must be accessible, human, and charismatic, even when our own party seems to have ignored us. That way, we can build a movement, put pressure in the right places, and sell the policies that matter, critically, to this nation.
It will not be what we say, but how we say it, that defines what role we play in the next eight years. If we wish to be heard and respected in policy-making circles, we must remember that it is not what we say, but how we say it, that matters most.