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Should we call Mitt Romney “Willard”? It depends on who “we” are and what role we see ourselves as playing.
Archive for the ‘Rhetoric and Framing’ Category
December 28th, 2011
Alan Abramowitz’ proof that there is no such thing as an “anti-incumbent” election that sweeps out incumbents from both parties-in 2000 words and two charts, and the charts are quite literally worth two thousand words.
December 5th, 2011
Category: 501(c)(3), Arts and Cultural Policy, charity, NonProfits, Rhetoric and Framing, Uncategorized, Urban policy, Urbanism
(cross-post with nonprofiteer.net) Had a fascinating conversation recently with Margy Waller, a special advisor to Cincinnati’s ArtsWave, which leads the nation in evidence-based approaches to advocating for arts funding. Ms. Waller had reached out to correct my misunderstanding (and therefore misreporting) of ArtsWave’s efforts, noting that the argument is not that the public should fund [...]
November 20th, 2011
It’s time to remind ourselves what the “rotten apples” metaphor means and what it does not. It means that a even very few corrupt individuals in an organization need to be detected and dealt with quickly, because the rot otherwise quickly spreads and infects the whole system. Someone getting away with stuff is an object [...]
November 8th, 2011
Category: 501(c)(3), charity, Income distribution, Moral philosophy, NonProfits, Philanthropy, Rhetoric and Framing, Uncategorized
. . . wrote Andy Rooney in this long-ago essay. This makes as much sense as anything else Andy Rooney ever said, which is to say, not much. What does it mean to “deserve” charity, beyond needing it? As George Bernard Shaw’s Alfred Doolittle memorably explained in Pygmalion, If theres anything going, and I put [...]
August 27th, 2011
Category: 2011 Democratic Agenda, Conservatism, Debt ceiling, Economics, Elections 2010 and 2012, Republican Party, Rhetoric and Framing, Stimulus, Taxation
Keith Humphreys’ thoughtful post called to mind some thoughts I wanted to jot down after re-reading Drew Westen’s NYT piece on Obama and Jonathan Chait’s blistering response to Westen in the New Republic. Westen is surely a primary target of Keith’s scorn, and I agree with both Chait and Keith that Westen grossly exaggerates what [...]
August 15th, 2011
Category: Britain, Rhetoric and Framing
Through my work rebuilding the Iraq mental health care system after the war, I met an astonishingly brave young American man who had willingly taken on multiple dangerous assignments, had a genius for organization, and an admirably developed sense of right and wrong. When I ran into him again a few years later, he was, [...]
August 11th, 2011
Category: Politics and Leadership, Rhetoric and Framing
“Corporations are people, too”-cheap shot against Mitt Romney.
June 7th, 2011
Conservative references to “Europe” may sound like they’re about economics. But they’re really about religion. “Europe” means “secularism” and secularism means moral decline.
