This is the second in a series by me and I hope, others, honoring and continuing the legacy of Eric Boehlert, the invaluable media critic who tragically died this month. The first story was Honoring Eric Boehlert's Spirit, starting with the NYT's Bizarre Story on the Jackson Hearings. The series carries the hashtag #EricsLegacy.
Rick Perlstein has been chronicling the rise of conservatism in a series of books, including his latest, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. He was recently asked to comment on an article from an “agenda-setting DC Publication” (almost certainly Politico or The Hill).
Perlstein tweeted that, with Eric Boehlert gone, he was no long going to let requests like this slide. He then tweeted the email he wrote to the reporter:
He concluded the email by writing that the reporter was acting like a conveyer belt, to aid and abet the right’s strategy to dominate.
Perlstein gets to the heart of the mainstream media’s passive approval of right wing framing. All the right has to do is put something, anything, out there (CRT, “grooming”), and people like the guy from the “agenda-setting publication” will leap at it like the kids running after the second soccer ball or the dog chasing a squirrel.
It goes back to Nixon and then Lee Atwater, who said in the ‘80s, “we can’t say the n-word, but we can say “TAXES,” and our voters will know what we mean. Then in the ‘90s, Newt Gingrich and (now the New York Times focus group guy) Frank Luntz used the same playbook to demonize Democrats with a list of words for Republicans to call Democrats, like “traitors, corrupt, disgrace, etc.”
Like Atwater and Gingrich, today’s right doesn’t even try to hide the cynicism of their propaganda campaign. The creator of the campaign, Christopher Rufo tweeted:
We have successfully frozen their brand—"critical race theory"—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.
The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think "critical race theory." We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.
Reading this obvious intent to scam Americans and make them demonize other Americans, it should be, but is not, astonishing that reporters do stories on how “liberals and conservatives ascribe different meanings” to “buzzwords.” The story is and has been for more than 50 years:
Right uses Phony Messaging to Demonize Democrats.
The great Driftglass and Bluegal discuss the Perlstein tweets on their latest Professional Left Podcast.
Finally, we have to fight back against this crap at the ballot box. Don’t forget to do what it takes to encourage massive youth voting, including efforts by Civic Influencers to help college voter activism and with The Civics Center for high school students.