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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Deceptive Framing

Every story framing new Republican tactics as "fighting back" against the Senate Democrats recent ending of some filibusters to break the logjam obstructing the ongoing crisis of vacant judicial and administrative posts is falsely treating as a Democratic provocation what was in fact a reluctant response to egregious abuses. Such frames are not neutral or innocent, any more than the media's endless false equivalencies are neutral or innocent. Pretending though they do simply to report the flow of tactical give and take between senatorial factions, in positioning Republicans as responding to Democratic provocation they are actually constructing a narrative assigning blame to Democrats and locating Republicans as stalwart underdogs in a drama in which in fact Republicans have indulged in historically unprecedented obstruction of Democracy in ways that threaten every citizen of their country with economic, military, environmental catastrophe.

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