Framing Matters
By This is six weeks old, and might have been previously discussed here, but Forbes reports that the Obama Administration has had the slowest rate of increase in Federal spending since . . . Eisenhower. This leads to two questions. First, do conservatives still trust that dirty liberal rag? Second, how is it that Obama has allowed his tenure to be framed as the precise opposite?
It’s not all bad in the framing department. According to the NYT today, Republicans are deeply concerned that their candidate is being swift boated, and according to one strategist who worked on GWB’s 2004 campaign, “Team Obama is doing just what we did in 2004, which is to define the opposition furiously and early”. This gives me a brief flutter of rare optimism.
Framing news is not all bad, unless you’re Nike. Today Nike decided that the Joe Paterno Child Development Center in Beaverton, Oregon will have its name changed. No shit. As reported here (I wonder how long that statue will stand on the Penn State campus?), the web page has not been updated. (UPDATE: it wasn’t a Nike webpage. But, they should really do something about the sign on the building). Where Nike needs to do some quick re-framing is an explanation as to why it took them so long.
