We’ve been receiving a lot of emails about our last blog post, many of them asking why we don’t do a list of liberal labels. Well, we responded, liberals don’t do labels.
Oh, yeah? Figarists responded. How about “Tea Baggers?” How about “Nazis” and “fascists” ?
Those aren’t labels. They’re name-calling. Name-calling isn’t labeling. It makes liberals seem childish and stupid—an excellent way to make right-wing extremists seem almost reasonable. Liberals! If you want to win an argument, stop trying to make your mates giggle. “Tea Baggers” gets you nowhere. (“The Glenn Beck Party”—that label could stick.)
Take an issue, any issue, and you’ll see conservatives carefully crafting tropes that help them. Bush tax cuts, for instance: Do you hear a lot of conservatives hurling names at those who want to end the cuts? No, they talk instead about “crippling the job creators.”
Or take climate change. Liberals’ first instinct is to call the climate deniers “earth haters” or “ignoramuses.” What if they looked for a trope instead of a silly name, attacking the issue instead of opponents? Call climate change “carbon poisoning,” and you might get somewhere.
Want Figaro to suggest more labels? Name the issues you want labeled, and we’ll do our best.