Don't Buy It

October 29, 2012
Strategic communications consultant Shenker-Osoria's first book considers the word "economy" and the metaphors we use to illustrate it. Conservatives, for instance, view the economy as a "moral enforcer": "the individual is clearly to blame for what befalls her." Other people will allude to it in terms of health, water, or motion (think of sick economies, trickle-down theory and downward spiral). The author has very good points about how conservatives and progressives present their plans, and lack thereof, to deal with the present crisis. We should not speak in abstractions such as "costs grew" and "paychecks shrank." Rather, Shenker-Osoria exhorts, we should speak of CEOs, conservative politicians and lobbyists attacking labor unions and suppressing wages; we should talk less about hurting the economy and more about how the economy might hurt people. Without doubt, this book is written from the liberal or progressive viewpoint (though liberals economists like Paul Krugman take their knocks) and, while Shenker-Osorio is not an economist, her view of the rhetoric we suffer through is sharp and to the point in saying that we need to define what the economy is, how it works and what it can do for us. If someone can deliver that, we might have a solutionâthat is, if anyone will listen. Agent: Max Brockman, Brockman Inc.

September 1, 2012
In her debut, communications consultant Shenker-Osorio gives progressives marching orders on how to talk about dollars and cents. "When we take a 'tax the rich' messaging approach to trying to rectify our deep and damaging inequality," writes Shenker-Osorio, "we succeed at one thing for certain. We get people to hate paying taxes even more." There are innumerable reasons for that psychological data point, including the juvenile magical-thinking belief that we're certain to be rich one day, but the fact remains, people don't like to hear about coughing up more money. So how to get them to ponder the possibility? Not through means the Democrats have already tried, for while Democrats are excellent at conjuring up complex solutions to complex problems, Republicans are masters at sloganizing their way to simplicity. One thing that remains to be done, writes the author, is generating appropriate and memorable sound bites--but, more important, another is "to sing our fight songs and never mind about pissing off those who disagree with us." President Obama may take a mild-mannered approach that seems to hold the thought of offending anyone as a cardinal sin, but it's gloves-off time. Beyond this big-picture reformation, Shenker-Osorio looks closely at the language of the first question on people's minds these days, namely the economy, and in this conservative presupposition reigns: "The genius...of conservatives," she writes, "is in not just trumpeting their version of events. They also embed the key ideas that (1) government activity is the problem and (2) economic fluctuations of this magnitude are normal and expected." The recent cataclysm is anything but "normal and expected," but so much of the language of the economy, she notes, is based on metaphors that suggest it's a living, breathing thing, and progressives fail to make the case that it's an artificial construct, subject to rules and regulations. A persuasive case for retooling how activists think and talk about matters of the wallet.

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