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{"id":2476,"date":"2007-04-25T02:30:19","date_gmt":"2007-04-25T07:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/25\/power-of-words\/"},"modified":"2007-04-25T02:30:19","modified_gmt":"2007-04-25T07:30:19","slug":"power-of-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/25\/power-of-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Power of Words"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Kris and I are struck by the military\u2019s decision to \u201cspin\u201d the death of Pat Tillman<\/a>. Pat, the truth is now being told, was killed by \u201cfriendly fire\u201d \u2014 a spin if I\u2019ve ever heard one \u2014 there are no \u201cfriendly\u201d bullets. Better, so it now appears, to tell a story of a former NFL player\u2019s heroic killing at the hands of enemy fire than to tell the truth that he was killed by the accidental shooting of his own comrades.
\nWords are the media and media is all about its words. Since the Reagan era, who was both a master of words and surrounded by others who knew how to cast a vision with words, Democrats have been persuaded that they are losing elections because they are losing the battle of words. George Lakoff, a professor at Cal-Berkeley, is the author of the recent Thinking Points<\/em> and this book builds on his others: Don\u2019t Think of an Elephant!<\/em>, Moral Politics<\/em>, and the more recent Whose Freedom?<\/em>. His colleage, Geoffrey Nunberg, in his Thinking Right<\/em>, addresses the same theme. Both authors are trying to help Democrats find a potent set of words that will express the Democratic agenda and strike home with common Americans.
\nThese books of late have led me to think about how evangelicals have labeled liberals (and Diana Butler Bass\u2019 Christianity for the Rest of Us<\/em> comes to mind as an attempt to undo some of that labeling), how liberals have labeled evangelicals (if you think of Jerry Falwell you can thank the wordsmiths), and how critics of emerging are labeling it (footnotes omitted).
\nWhat continues to amaze me is the potency of a well-crafted image or expression. The best words tell a whole story, evoke a common set of values, and bring insight all in one little bundle. Like \u201cfriendly fire\u201d \u2014 a bullet shot by comrades in a war situation is transformed, because of accident, from death into the unfortunate casualty of comrades in war who sometimes are put in situations that are tragic for their own comrades. O\u2019Reilly has persuaded millions that liberals are \u201cspin doctors\u201d but he\u2019s \u201cfair and balanced\u201d while CNN gives off the image of cool, objective, rational, disinterested detached \u201cnothing but the facts\u201d reporting.
\nI\u2019m awestruck tonight to think that \u201cthe Word\u201d became flesh so that embodied life brings into living reality that Word. And then four evangelists tried to capture that living-reality-Word back into words so that the story of Jesus would be told.
\nWords, words, words \u2026 we use words to tell the truth and we use words to spin the story.
\nWhat baffles Kris and me is that the military evidently (1) knew the truth [Pat Tillman was killed accidentally], (2) realized it was a bad time for bad news, so (3) invented a fiction that told the story of a hero.
\nHow many times have you been shoved, as Tillman\u2019s comrade was, by a superior into putting a spin on a clear set of facts in order to manufacture an untruth that protected that superior\u2019s preferred story?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"