I happen to agree with the view that an emphasis on "framing" is too simplistic and sloganeering

Lots of people talk about "framing" but no one seems to agree on just what it means.

As far as I'm concerned, framing - which I've been talking about for over 25 years (without using that name) - is not about sloganeering; rather, it involves recognizing the truth of the saying that "what you say is not as important as what the other person hears." That is, how you say what you say matters.

In the early 1980s I ran for Congress a couple of times as a democratic socialist. After one League of Women Voters debate, a reporter told me that it seemed to her that I had the ability "to make the most radical positions sound like a voice of sweet moderation."

That, friends, is framing.

So we have a manufactured story about how Roberts pays his hair stylist $400 for two haircuts?

What's the problem with that? We are losing our manufacturing jobs and moving to a service economy. The stylist is providing a service, and is obviously making much more than they could in a union manufacturing job. Therefore, the Bush tax cut is working, and America will soon have many more service jobs like this and poverty will soon be in our review mirror.

Not.

An earlier commenter mentioned the similarities in this post to some of the content at the DailyHolwer. There is one major difference however: Somerby cites the role "liberal" journalists play in framing these caricatures. Around the time of the Coulter "f-got" controversy, he looked at how Maureen Dowd basically says the same things about Edwards, but with less offensive language:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh030507.shtml

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Fairbanksing

A gratuitous fabrication in a story when the truth would have served just fine. This style was made famous by Eve Fairbanks, Reporter/Researcher for The New Republic and opinion writer for The Examiner.

Alternate definition for Fairbanksing: writing a book review without reading the book.

She's giving some journalistic practices a bad name -- her own.

Glenn, I am late to this post but it has haunted me all day. While I read your work everyday, this one deserves special merit.

We boomers had a word for people like Eve Fairbanks: Shallow. The word may no longer be used in the same way but in my day, it literally meant a person with no depth. No depth of understanding; no depth of values; no depth of intelligence; no depth of character. Eve Fairbanks, Drudge, the Politico and their ilk are shallow. We face so many problems: the Iraq debacle; torture in our name; surveillance absent proper authorization and oversight; politization of our justice system; the VT tragedy; lack of health care, etc.; and a true sqeeze on America's middle class families and their children's children. John Edwards is addressing these profound and important issues and doing so with class, with intelligence, and with sound policy proposals. Nevertheless, he is presumably to be marginalized because of his hair. How much more shallow can the Fairbanks, Drudges, Politicos, and Kurtz's get?

This is the best thing about Glenn being at Salon--being able to take an attempt to create more bogus CW by the "MSM" and dissecting it as it happens. Unfortunately this time there might be too much attention being paid elsewhere to hope this one will die out any time soon. This one might need to be revisited after this shooting thing settles.

The idea that Glenn is channeling Somerby, or owes him a h/t is just odd. They both cover media dysfunction, but to the extent that their ideas cross it has more to do with the fact that any rational person will come to similar conclusions than any "influence" issues.

Zax makes a point Somerby would, that it's not just rightwing sources that start these bogus memes. I'm sorry to say the NY Times with Dowd and Frank Rich (among others) have done their share of inventing completely false tales about Dem candidates. Theirs is a different brand of dysfunction than that which we see from far right sources, but the effects can be as devastating. I assume the next time they try it Glenn will be all over them as well, and in those cases it should stop it in its tracks.

LisaS thinks this is something that happens as often to republicans, but the last 2 elections don't back that up. Gore and Kerry had completely fabricated tales about them work their way into the popular culture, while genuine stories of GW Bush's sordid past were resoundingly ignored by the MSM.

In this cycle, the examples Lisa gives are ones in which I'd bet money the sources driving the exposures of skeletons in closets on the parts of republican candidates are the competing research teams of the competeing Republican candidates themselves. If past is prologue, once the primaries are over that will end. Unless Glenn and others can change the dynamic.

And as was pointed out, there's a diffrence between real stories that come from things actual voters care about as opposed to controversies created and stoked exclusively by memebrs of the MSM, who then site "some" who think so. The righties who care about adultery and homosexuality drive the scandals surrounding the republicans. The "pretty girl" slanders of Edwards don't have anything to do with what the voters think--they're manufacured entirely by the pundits themselves, and imparted to "some" voters who allegedly care.

As for Edwards' populism being somehow compromised by his having and spending money--what the..? If only poor people could be populists the rich would never have to worry about losing power to the ignorant peasants. In fact it's primarily those who have money (and the power that comes with it) that can bring about populist change.

Timberman and Rosenburg both deserve a hearty Cheers.

Lisa:

What you describe as "vague invocations of stories unfavorable to GOP candidates" are in fact strong evidence against an argument that this process is partisan

Even the most partisan of partisan hacks doesn't vote with his president 100% of the time. But that's what you're implkicitly requiring--100% correlation as proof of the process is partisan.

The requirement is absurd on its face.