Word choice

[Bgno64]

http://blogs.lancasteronline.com/smartremarks/2010/02/02/word-choice/

Been writing columns for the Sunday News since 1996, and over the years the preferred right-wing term of demonology has been liberal. You dirtly liberal. You’re a liberal! Liberal liberal liberal.

But that’s changed in recent years - now the term is “progressive.” You and your progressive buddy Obama. You progressives! Progressives are ruining America! etc.

Funny because it proves the point of how Fox News influences conservative thinking and action - Progressive is obviously Glenn Beck’s term. Fox News does not tell us what to think, you progressive. Right.

But when did that change take place. It was fairly gradual; looking back in our letters to the editor archive, I’ve been called “progressive” more times in 2009 and so far in 2010 than I was in the entire 13 years prior. This seems to have coincided with the move of Beck to Fox News and the bigger stage.

[CrispyQ]

1. Many liberals adopted the descriptive "progressive" after the

right wing completely demonized the word liberal. Now the right wing is demonizing the word progressive. It doesn't matter what we call ourselves, they will demonize it, with the excellent help of the MSM.

Back in 2004 I was searching for articles on how the right demonized the word liberal & came across this DU article. It's the article that led me to this site. It's still relevant today.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/11/23_liberal.html

[Igel]

2. You don't understand euphemism.

If a referent is taboo or has some pejorative connotation, the word for it picks up the connotations. You don't want to use the word.

So you find a new word. But since that new word is used for a referent that is taboo or has a pejorative connotation, it's just a matter of time before that new word picks up the exact same connotation.

So you find a new word. But since that new word is used for a referent . . .

It's not until the referent has sufficiently lost its stigma that words for that referent don't eventually acquire one.

[madamesilverspurs]

3. About "liberal" -- we've had some very lively "discussions"

on our newspaper's comments boards. To really get the right-wingers all upset all you must do is posit that it was a bunch of radical liberals who founded this country, that without them we'd still be giving obeisance to the British monarch. One of their favorite responses involves re-defining "liberal" then and now (they're right, but not for the reasons they think). They haven't yet come up with a re-definition of "progressive", but it's fun to mention "liberal progressives" and then ask them to present an example of something positive produced by the opposite.


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[bertman]

4. Jesus was a librul, dammit. That's what I tell the wingnuts.

Signed,

a proud, unrepentant liberal non-believer of 40+ years who isn't afraid to call himself a progressive either.