NOTE: This post is the first in what I hope will be an occasional series highlighting examples of right-wing "fencing" techniques against progressive figures and values. If you spot an example of fencing in the media, please email me -- or post a Fencepost diary of your own.
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Over at the Newshounds blog, Melanie describes how Fox News contributes to the broader right-wing strategy of "fencing":
Any frequent Fox News watcher knows that Fox systematically and patiently paints negative pictures of certain people and certain groups, most notably anyone who doesn't agree with those now in power. Eventually, all Fox has to do is mention the name of the person or group and the regular Fox viewer "gets the message."
Melanie gives a pithy run-down of Fox's relentless targeting of figures, entities and ideas as various as Ted Kennedy, Hollywood, and the entire nation of France -- which in Fox's unfair and unbalanced worldview is "a wimpy, whiny country full of sissy cry babies who sit around drinking lattes as the little finger on the hand holding their coffee cup sticks up in the air.
All this is a prelude to a more thorough look at how Fox (and in particular Neil Cavuto) have recently trained their sight on New York State attorney General Eliot Spitzer:
Cavuto is beginning such a process with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Eliot Spitzer is a very confident, very well respected Democrat who has made no secret of the fact that he intends to run for higher office, most likely Governor of New York. Fox never sleeps and in their view there's no time like the present to start painting Eliot Spitzer as a bad guy. If and when Spitzer announces what he will do next, the foundation will be laid and all Fox will have to do is build on that foundation.
This is a prime example of how fencing works in practice. As defined in my earlier diary, "Fencing vs. Framing: a post-Lakoff analysis",
a fence is any political idea, campaign or mindset which is intended to wall voters off from the opposite side before the public even gets to hear the opposing argument.
[...] If frames are a window to view the world through, then fences block much of that world out -- rendering the frames largely irrelevant.
A candidate or party doesn't get a chance to frame its issues if a metaphorical fence separates it from the audience. When the voters can't (or, more accurately, won't) see and hear our side of the debate, all those handy new frames become useless.
In the Newshounds article, what we find is a pre-emptive assault on the very idea of Eliot Spitzer as the legitimate spokesman of anything. Early polling shows Spitzer easily defeating three-term incumbent George Pataki for the catbird seat on Albany's "Second Floor" (i.e., the Governor's office). And Spitzer beats any likely Republican challenger except Rudy Giuliani, whom most observers believe has no interest in such a provincial post.
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But why should Fox be so concerned about a heavily "blue" state, which was bound to swing back into the Democratic column anyway, after three years of a moderate Republican unlikely to run for re-election?
In my view, it's not merely that Spitzer is a prominent threat to corrupt CEOs and by extension, Wall Street -- where he is getting plenty of campaign donations despite his prominent role in busting lawless corporations. Spitzer is a target because he is successfully raising progressive issues and values on a national level, and could rise much higher than the Governor's mansion in New York. The right wing are looking past 2008 already to potential Democratic nominees far down the line. (How does Spitzer-Obama '12 grab you?)
As such, Spitzer -- like any prominent and dynamic progressive -- must be fenced off. As Melanie writes at Newshounds,
In the world of Fox ... there's no time like the present to make this about Eliot Spitzer, the renegade bad boy of corporate destruction, going after all those patriotic CEOs who are working hard to make America great and to provide jobs for "the folks."
Reactionary fencing encourages citizens to turn their minds off the moment they hear an idea that might be dangerous to the right-wing status quo. Whatever someone like Eliot Spitzer says, you can and will tune it out, because we've told you a thousand times that Spitzer is a bad, bad man, against progress and jobs.
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As argued in my original diary on the topic, I believe the concept of fencing is equally useful whether one categorizes it a "superframe" or a distinct concept intended to outfox our efforts to catch up with Republican's disciplined and longstanding framing campaigns.
The other side's goal is to wall off all liberal, progressive, green or Democratic ideas and representatives before a dialogue can even begin -- a much broader and even more threatening, reactionary project. The more we are aware of and work to counter that project, the better chance that we don't wake up in 4 years wondering, "How'd we lose the White House again -- we did such a good job of framing our issues?"