ACORN and the Republican Noise Machine's "War on Language"

Or at least that's what I'm calling it.  I think the McCain campaign might go with the more banal, innocent-sounding "spin".  Even more likely, they've probably already branded this one their "War on Voter Fraud".

But that's the thing -- it's not either of those.  If anything, it's the most recent instance of a very real attack on the meaning of language.  And I'm attributing it to the Republican party because it highlights a highly-refined message-control technique that they have pioneered and used very effectively since the days of Nixon -- and perfected in the days of Bush by his chief political advisor, Karl Rove.

The "message control" I'm speaking of is a deadly effective, highly deceptive art of wordsmithing -- aimed at manipulating the media to get it to say what they want.  It's a lot like what we used to call "propaganda", but this new beast is something entirely more sophisticated, toxic, and difficult to nail down.  And it frequently plays even the most seasoned news professionals for chumps.

The irony, of course, is that while their people may not be so good at actually governing lately, they've gotten very good at this little game.  The Democrats, for whatever reason, are not so good at it -- I like to think it's because they find it dishonest and distasteful.  But then maybe it's just that their team doesn't have the gifted liars the Republicans have right now.  It's difficult to say ...

At its root, the technique consists of wording your talking points, your speeches, your slogans, and press releases in such subtly deceptive ways that you end up making behavior that's actually perfectly normal and human ... appear to be aberrant, even sinister.

Ohh, semantics!  Is there any innocent person you can't bludgeon with misbegotten rage?

Yes, well ... we shall see ...

The scene of the fracas in question -- one which I think the McCain camp won, unfortunately -- appears to have been the use of the phrase ... "to turn in".

[cue melodramatic music: "dump- dump- DUMMMMM!"]

Now "turn in", as it turns out, has more than one meaning, one of which might be

turn in - vt. 1. to submit for review, as in a homework assignment or a job application.

Pretty clear, right?  Ah-hah! But we shall show to you that it is not!

Upon closer inspection, this usage could be used to imply that the "turner-inner", if you will, is imparting a glow of legitimacy to the thing "turned-in".  There is, as it turns out, an expectation that when one "turns something in" -- that they are staking their reputation on the validity and truth of said "thing".

It was this unconscious meaning behind the phrase that Republicans exploited particularly well this week, as we will show later on, so stay with me here ...

Another usage, with quite the opposite meaning, fascinatingly -- might be

turn in - vt. 2. to relinquish, to offer up, as illegitimate or illegal, to some authority, presumably to be brought to justice.

This is the one used on TV when someone turns themselves in to the cops, or turns a drug dealer in to the DEA.

It's also the one you might use if you were "turning in" obviously-faked voter registration forms to the authorities!  Buuuut then I get ahead of myself ...

Now, if you've watched the news lately, you probably heard a lot of noise about a supposed scandal concerning ACORN, the community organization that, among other charitable causes, facilitates the voter-registration process, especially in swing states where registrations are at an all-time high, and government offices are overloaded.

The specific bit of hubbub that I heard about -- via CNN and later Fox News -- was that ACORN had reportedly "turned in" (watch out -- there's that phrase!) a few thousand voter registration forms that were found to be fraudulent.

The reporters themselves were in quite a tizzy about this, especially the ones on Fox, so much so that they didn't offer any clarification about which meaning of "turned in" was in play.

But while they were weak on research and facts, they tried to make up for it by strongly implying that

1. The proprietors of ACORN might be complicit in fraud.
   
2. ACORN also might be trying to rig the election in favor of Barack Obama (this was helped along by the fact that all the ACORN officials they showed on TV were black).
   
3. Barack Obama might be somehow in somehow cahoots with them because he once represented their organization in some court case several years ago (yes, the "dubious associations" game again: hard to prove, impossible to disprove).

Now, once again, I would like to point out that those in the news media have great power to make a story appear newsworthy simply by reporting on it -- even in cases where they are more or less passively reporting on it -- i.e. without offering up any facts, research, solid details, etc.

So here are some facts for you about 1) what really happened and 2) what the laws are.  I uncovered them simply by going to some non-mainstream media sites (our friend Rush Limbaugh would probably call them "hateful liberal blogs"):

• ACORN's only legal function in the voting arena is to help distribute empty forms and collect filled-out ones.  They can't validate them, verify them, or otherwise approve or reject them.  They are required by law to turn in every form they get.  Truth.
• What they CAN do is round up the bogus-looking ones (the ones registered to "Hannah Man-tana" and "Heywood D'Jabuzzoff") mark them, and "turn them in" to election authorities.  That is what they did.  They located fraudulent forms, marked them as suspicious, and turned them in to election officials -- as they are required to do by law.
• Since ACORN and all the other organizations like it are bound by law to turn in any and all voter registration forms to state election authorities for review, anyone helping out with the election process is going to come across some falsified forms, possibly even a large number, for whatever reason -- and no one knows who filled them out, or why, or even who they would have fraud-voted for.

Now, while we can all agree that that doesn't mean it's "right" to fill out a fraudulent registration form, we should also admit that the fact that people handed them in to ACORN doesn't mean anything about anything.  Except that some random people cause mischief and other people like to capitalize on it for political reasons.

But getting back to my first point -- the most interesting thing is the use of that phrase: "turned in".  It's the (purposefully misleading) phrase the McCain campaign used when they quote-unquote "alerted" the media to this quote-unquote "scandal", and, sadly but predictably, it's the exact wording the reporters ended up using to spread the story.

That's the beauty of their War on Language.  You can take an innocent phrase like "turned in", carefully chosen for its multiple meanings, affix it to a press release from your campaign -- and it flies totally under the radar, all the way through the news media, right back to the unsuspecting voters sitting in their homes. 

It's like magic!

All a reporter has to do to innocently spread the perception -- anywhere, everywhere -- that this trusted, charitable organization is somehow trying to subvert our democracy is to say

"ACORN was reported to have turned in illegitimate registrations in several states".

There's no research, no journalism behind that statement.  It's completely unhelpful to the public because it doesn't say what happened.  And that truly is the path of least resistance for them.  All they have to do is report the story as it was framed by the McCain campaign.

Our guilty little ill-informed minds will do the rest.  They can count on that.  We'll see the interviews with the mostly-black volunteers at ACORN and our lizard-brains of prejudice and paranoia (we all have them a little bit) will fill in the blanks.

After all, semantically at least, these reporters have told "the truth".  ACORN did "turn them in".  They just didn't feel the need to report which meaning of "turned in" actually occurred -- because??? ... well, I'm going to just give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it was laziness. But it wasn't laziness on the McCain campaign's part -- they knew exactly what they were doing.

But either way, what the media have done here (once again) is wrong and neglectful because substantially, they've helped perpetuate a great, big lie: They've tarnished the name of a good organization that does much-needed work for the community -- and ACORN does a lot more than register voters.

Most importantly, though -- as journalists, aren't they supposed to be in the business of seeing through these kinds of tricks?

Yeah.  So there you have it.  The ACORN "scandal" is another big, fat ... non- ... story.

But it sure illustrates beautifully how easy it is to make something out of nothing, then slap that big, sticky ball of nothing onto a decent person's back and force people like ... well, like myself, I suppose --  to come out and clean off the nonsense ...

With a crusty old toothbrush.

And a big bottle of Goo-Gone.

And now ... my hands smell like chemicals ...

Who on earth chooses to live like this?

Oh yeah, me!