"Don't Think of an Elephant," a review

I read George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant” and could not be more disappointed. First and foremost, I was expecting a scholarly work that followed the tradition of citing sources and backing up statements with facts. The Healthy Forest Initiative, The Clear Skies Act and No Child Left Behind are bad policies, fine. But at least devote one paragraph to explain why, as opposed to simply saying they are bad. It’s an old writer’s adage: Show, don’t tell.

Also, Lakoff, a linguist from the University of California Berkeley, is guilty of using a “frame” deployed by both parties: the Social Security Lockbox. A lockbox conjures a vision that it should not be “raided” and that any one that raids it is “stealing.” Both parties use the “lockbox” reference to scare the populace, and Lackoff did it too when describing where the money for Iraq came from. For the record, the Social Security Administration acts like a semi-sovereign trust fund that can buy and sell US Treasury notes. So the money for Iraq wasn’t raided from Social Security, but rather lent. The SSA bought, i.e. gave the Treasury money, and in turn got interest-bearing notes. A lot different than raiding, right? Whether or not this is the best strategy is debatable.

Lakoff references Orwell and Orwellian Language. The essay he is citing, but never mentions, is Politics and the English Language. It is an absolute must read. In case you are in a rush, the most important part, particularly in Lackoff’s debate, is ¾ down the essay, and starts “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”

Orwell approaches language from 30,000 feet, so to speak. He is an outsider looking at all of politics and his only stake is to raise awareness of all political speech. Lakoff, on the other hand, has a mission—to demonize the right and push a progressive agenda. Political beliefs aside, Lakoff’s approach is ineffective because it so politically motivated. He is like a mouse telling you cheese is good.

Speaking of Lakoff’s political motivation, I must draw your attention to page 94, where he contrasts the conservatives “ten-word philosophy” to his progressive vision. Throughout the book he talks about how well conservatives get the point across and how if only the progressives could do the same they would rule the world. Lakoff gets the chance in this book but does a poor job…and he is a linguist! All of the conservative philosophies are vivid stances on issues: “Strong defense” “Free markets” “Lower Taxes” “Smaller Government” “Family Values.” His ten words—again, I am not debating the philosophy but the terminologies—are too broad and unclear. “Better Future”—no duh. “Effective government”—good concept, but the phrase says nothing about how it will be effective, as compared to the conservative’s “smaller government” phraseology.

And finally, Lakoff’s biggest complaint is that the conservative organization is well orchestrated and machinated, while progressives are dispersed and ineffectual. Lakoff wants to change this but further propagates the problem. Like the progressive organization, “Don’t Think of an Elephant” is a disparate hodgepodge of various Lakoff works. For instance, he repeated the same paragraph—almost verbatim—about the strict father versus nurturing parent model at least five times. Rather than writing and editing a new book, he simply cut and paste sections from his other book, Moral Politics. If the ideas overlapped, so what. It is this lack of detail and execution that Lakoff believes has caused progressives ideals to lose to conservatives. Yet when given the chance to be detailed and thought out, Lakoff blew it.