Here is a great example of how Hillary Clinton innovates, teaches,
and generates change. A little while ago, her Twitter account tweeted
this quote from her speech at Day in Blue today.
For
seven years I have posted remarks Hillary has made
here in the U.S. and all over the world on issues that I have automatically tagged
"women's issues." You can
search that category here and come up with pages and pages of posts with that tag.
But the truth about these issues is what Hillary said today, and I shall have to create a new, and more powerful tag:
NOT a women's issue.
For
many years, George Lakoff, linguist and political commentator, has
been busting his suspenders over the way Democrats have allowed
Republicans to control
framing. Here is a sample. There are many.
Tuesday, 30 October 2012 10:00 By Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview
OK,
so he doesn't wear suspenders. He just looks like the kind of guy who
would. The point is that for decades Democrats have allowed Republicans
to control the language of policy-making and legislation.
In
Hillary Clinton Democrats may have the candidate who can change all of
that, Hillary is inventive where language is concerned, so much so that
when her 2008 campaign site urged us to follow her on Twitter I thought
she invented brand-name. It sounded like something she would make up,
and I asked her that on Twitter after I joined. Who had ever heard of a
"townterview" before Hillary became Secretary of State?
She may
not have laid out a platform yet, but Hillary has, since she began her
public speaking tour in 2013, been drawing the blueprint, and it
involves changing points of view by changing the way we talk about
things.
Today she made something clear. "Pink" issues are red,
white, and blue issues. If we adopt her phrase as a tag and a hashtag
we can go a long way toward establishing some of the viewpoints Hillary
is going to be advocating. In other words, we can help her reframe the
issues by adopting her vocabulary.
I have never failed to learn something by listening to Hillary. Her
1000 Days initiative
taught us how providing good (and surprisingly inexpensive) maternal
and child nutrition over the 1000 days from conception to age two can
change the future, not just for families, but also for nations. Her
Clean Cookstoves Initiative taught us how cooking over unsafe fuels affects the health and lives of billions of people all over the world.
When
Hillary Clinton speaks, there is always something to learn. I have
learned today that I can help her reframe how we talk about (frame) and
then
see things by changing how I categorize them.
P.S. Something else I just learned. I think the hashtag works better
if you leave the apostrophe out. #NotAWomensIssue *sigh*
What has Hillary Clinton taught you?
Hillary Clinton 
Bill Clinton
