To the Ladies in the Room

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/election04/19183/

 

To the Ladies in the Room

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet

Posted on July 8, 2004,

http://www.alternet.org/story/19183/

 

AUSTIN – Last week on PBS's " NOW With Bill Moyers, "

there was a long interview with Frank Luntz, the

Republican pollster and message-meister. Luntz

recently advised Republicans to explain " the policy of

pre-emption and the war in Iraq " by recommending that

" no speech about ... Iraq should begin without a

reference to 9-11. " This would be despite the fact

that the 9-11 Commission concluded Iraq has no

connection to 9-11. Now you know why the

administration continues to make this nonexistent

connection.

 

Luntz described his methods with appealing pride. His

job is to " set the context " and " frame the debate, "

which he learns how to do through focus groups, polls

and dial sessions. But he kept drawing the line at the

word " manipulation. " No, no, he doesn't manipulate

people, he insisted, he merely gives them a context

for the message, he merely discovers what it is they

want to hear and how best to say it to them.

 

I'm listening to all this because this is what the

shrewdies in Washington pay attention to – you can't

hardly be a political writer anymore without sources

on linguistics, semiotics, message control and all

this good business. It dates you something awful if

you do old-fashioned stuff, like call politicos to

find out how it's going.

 

Luntz has discovered that the 4 percent of Americans

who still have not made up their minds about this

election tend to be working women, younger, new

mothers and fairly low-wage earners. I was pleased to

hear Luntz explain how he'd uncovered the most

interesting thing about these women. By dint of clever

professional questioning, Luntz had come to notice

that what the women seem to feel they need more than

anything else is... time. I was staggered, since I and

every other woman journalist I know have been saying

this for only the last 20 or 30 years.

 

Yes, said, Luntz informed us, working women are

feeling incredibly pressured, between home, job, aging

parents, demanding kids, etc. Their lives are just

a-jangle with demands, and not enough time to fill

them. Now here, explains Luntz, is where he comes in.

 

" You have to empathize, " he said. " The very first

thing you have to do, it's not about issues, it's

about empathy. They have to know that you care, that

you understand them, that you understand the

frustrations. " Say a candidate of his – say George W.

Bush – is at a town hall meeting. He'd say, " 'Now I

want to talk to the ladies in the room' ... 'the women

in the room' is how I would put it ... and you say:

'Well, I'm gonna throw this out. I want you tell me if

I'm right or not. Ladies here, I'd say that your lack

of free time is one of the greatest challenges.' And

they'll all sit there, and they'll raise their hands,

and they'll all nod yes. At that moment, you have

bonded with those women. "

 

Which is all well and good, except then I'm trying to

envision what George W. Bush says to them next. The

National Women's Law Center released a study in April,

called " Slip Sliding Away, " on the erosion of women's

rights. It found, under Bush:

 

The Labor Department has refused to use tools at its

disposal to identify violations of equal pay laws.

 

Labor repealed regulations that allowed paid family

leave to be made available through state unemployment

funds. Now it's unpaid leave only.

 

Labor has proposed new regulations that deprive

millions of workers of the right to overtime pay – and

even gives tips to employers on how to avoid paying

overtime when the law still requires it.

 

The Department of Justice has weakened the enforcement

of laws against job discrimination and abandoned

pending sex discrimination cases.

 

Among the Bush budget cuts affecting the lives of

millions of women are cuts in Head Start and other

early childhood education programs, after-school

programs, K-12 education, housing subsidies, child

care, career education, services for victims of

domestic violence, the nutrition program for women,

infants and children (WIC) and Pell grants to help pay

for college.

 

All in all, it's kind of hard to see how Bush could

convince " the ladies " that he has helped take stress

out of their lives. Unless, of course, the lady is

married to a guy who makes $1 million a year – then

she'd have $92,000 extra a year to spend from the Bush

tax cuts.

 

Here's my problem. This is the record – this is what's

being done to women's lives. But it's so passe, you

see, to write about it. No linguistics, no empathy, no

putting it in context. Just the record. No one does

that kind of journalism anymore. How embarrassing.

© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights

reserved.

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