Leonard Pitts Jr.: Reclaiming 'liberal' and 'woke.' Democrats, stop letting the right frame the deba
By Leonard Pitts | The Miami Herald
| May 8, 2022, 7:00 a.m.
So let’s talk about That Word.
Meaning the word the political left was using to define itself until the political right got hold of it and made it an object of ridicule. The word that quickly became unusable, even faintly embarrassing.
No, the word is not “woke.”
It is, rather, “liberal,” a word that, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg argues in his 2006 book, “Talking Right,” was “already associated with profligacy, spinelessness, malevolence, masochism, elitism, fantasy, anarchy, idealism, softness, irresponsibility and sanctimoniousness” by the late 1970s as a result of white backlash to Black progress, the national schism over Vietnam and the perceived failures of the Great Society.
Then Ronald Reagan piled on. In 1988, he — soon to be followed by George H.W. Bush — dubbed it “the L-Word,” i.e., unsayable in polite company. Together, they conducted a master class in how, through relentless ridicule, a self-definition could be weaponized against those who chose it. Democratic leaders soon began refusing the label outright or accepting it only with prickly reluctance. The left was forced into a defensive crouch from which it has never quite emerged. ............(more)
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