Obama and Warren cribbed build it narrative from progressive Berkeley Professor

Posted by William A. Jacobson Wednesday, July 25, 2012 at 5:40pm By now you have heard the Obama and Liz Warren speeches about howno one got rich on his or her own. Listen to them again, its important to hear how they frame the issue almost identically: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOyDR2b71ag&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKjPI6no5ng&feature=player_embedded

This narrative is cribbed almost verbatim from the narrative of George Lakoff, a progressive linguistics activist and Professor at Berkeley. Like Warren, Lakoff was one of the academics who helped frame how the Occupy Wall Street movement presented itself. Lakoffs writings and theoriesseek to transform progressivepolitics and heis a frequent speaker on how progressives can reframe the political debate. Lakoff developed a linguistic narrative that progressives needed to counter conservatives by focusing on the role of government inenabling individual success, a narrative in which no person became successful on his or her own: Nobody makes a dollarin this country in business without using the common wealth. The idea that theres a self-made man, thats theresa self-made millionaire is false, it is absolutely false, and that isthe thing that Obama missed. Without this you dont have those roads, you dont have that internet, you dont have the banking system, etc. [video added at bottom of

post] Read how Lakoff framed the issue in a publication several years ago, then listen to the Obama and Warren speeches, they are not identical but very close substantively and linguistically (emphasis mine): There is no such thing as a self-made man. Every businessman has used the vast American infrastructure, which the taxpayers paid for, to make his money. He did not make his money alone. He used taxpayer infrastructure. He got rich on what other taxpayers had paid for: the banking system, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and Commerce Departments, and the judicial system, where nine-tenths of cases involve corporate law. These taxpayer investments support companies and wealthy investors. There are no self-made men! They wealthy have gotten rich using what previous taxpayers have paid for. They owe the taxpayers of this country a great deal and should be paying it back. Last March a diarist at Daily Kos noted the similarity of Warrens famous factory owner speech and Lakoffs formulation: This passage and the argument surrounding it sound extremely similar to something weve been hearing recently and for the first time in a long time (and this book came out in 2004) The something to which the Daily Kos diarist was referring was the very same video of Warrens speech posted at the top of this post. The approach of Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama is a cribbed narrative of the progressive movement which seeks to realign our individual-centered political dialogue around the individuals indebtedness to the government. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzN3AZk6f-Q&feature=player_embedded