Metaphors we die by....

I sent a shorter version of my "Speaking of offensive names, drop 'The Civil War'" post to The Oregonian as a letter to the editor after the paper editorialized in favor of the recent State Board of Education decision to force high schools do drop stereotyping names for sports teams.

Much to my surprise the editorial page editors printed my 150-word letter on Thursday. And to my equal surprise only one friend and my mother-in-law (who is, I should be quick to note, is also a friend) mentioned seeing it.

I think this speaks to the demise of the print medium. Or to my demise in reaching out to friends.

I actually addressed my comments to The Oregonian editors. I noted the media's role in perpetuating the use of "Civil War" to describe a mere collegiate rivalry. Sure, I wanted the paper's readers to mull over my modest proposal, but I really, REALLY, did want The Oregonian editors to consider dropping the term, just as they took the lead 20 years ago in dropping the use of Native-American names that describe sports teams.

Perhaps the most notable example is the "Washington Red Skins." Sports fans here have managed somehow with having Washington's NFL team referred to simply as "Washington" on the Oregonian's sports page.

So, in the few years left in which The Oregonian still clings to relevance as a means of communication, it could once again lead us to stop equating athletic rivalries with war.

While its editors are at it, they might look at the use of war terminology to describe political campaigns (war rooms, attack ads, war chests etc.) and government programs (War on Drugs, War on Poverty etc.)

Sadly metaphors have a way of unrealistically defining our expectations. Wars, government programs and political campaigns are won or lost...or so we are led to believe. There is no in-between. But were the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq wars won or lost? What of Afghanistan two years from now? And do wars ever really end for those who fight in them or are victims of them? Consider the rate of suicides among returning Iraq veterans....just for starters. Wars kill long after they "end" or are "won" or "lost."

And because of the flood of war imagery in our discourse is it wonder that compromise becomes increasingly difficult in our impressionable, emotional society?

The Oregonian, and the media in general, need to choose metaphors far more carefully. Who knows, it might even help them survive....

P.S. in today's Oregonian (5/28) is a letter supporting my letter. It is from William C. Woodcock of McMinnville.

"Information wars" in Washington DC

Our political culture has a “combat mentality.” It doesn’t exactly fit with our naive civics-class indoctrination from the 8th grade.

How bad are things in the world of politics?

Sometimes the “war” seeps out around the edges, as it did on Tuesday in a seemingly innocuous article about young Washington, D.C. aides hired to digest the news and present it to their bosses.

While news readers in technocratic departments seem to approach their jobs relatively dispassionately, Bobby Maldonado, 26, brings a different mentality to his job working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He's up at 4 a.m. to get a jump on events so that he can strategically analyze, arrange and present them to his big-business bosses at the Chamber.

You get a flavor for his, and the Chamber’s, perspective when you read how young Maldonado describes his job.

“The information wars are won before work....Our executives walk into meetings and they’re doing battles, whether it’s on health care or cap and trade, and information is power, and my job is to make sure they’re armed with the most powerful information.”

“Wars,” “battles,” “armed.”

Reading the story, you don’t get the feeling that Maldonado is some Glock-toting kook. But he's just another soldier — and aide to battlefield generals. His words fit the political culture of victors and vanquished. These folks are out for blood.

And the media amplify it. Of all the headlines that the Times could have put on a tepid story, the one they chose came from Maldonado’s quote. “Where News is Power, A Fight to be Well-armed.”

The war that isn’t

In the July 31st issue of the New York Times on the Op-Ed page, is a column headlined, “Obama’s Race War.”

Its lead sentence reads: “Americans are engaged in a war over a word: racism.” A prominent “pull quote” is “The fight is really about the president.”

The words have been chosen to put you in a bellicose frame of mind. The writer is (did you notice?) talking about WAR.

The column goes on to track the president’s support, or lack of it, among racial groups. Blacks give the Obama presidency a 91 percent favorability rating, Whites put it at 37 percent, and Hispanics come in at 49 percent.

As troubling as the figures are, they are NOT war statistics. They are not body counts. They do not detail the costs of war.

Why must the media rely on the image of war to describe simple differences?

To get our attention?

Will the truth not suffice?

Used repeatedly, such hyperbole doesn’t work but it does deaden. The war metaphor has become a cliché. It gets rolled out every campaign season. In Oregon, we use it to describe a sports rivalry, “The Civil War.”

Each time a writer trivializes war by using the word "war" metaphorically to describe relatively harmless activity, "war's" true meaning is cheapened. Such metaphors portray war as something far less horrific than it is. By degrees, war — real war — becomes correspondingly more palatable to readers.

We should rebel at the misuse and trivializing of the word. War is war. As those who have suffered from war say it is "hell.”

That's the veterans' and the victims' metaphor — "hell." It is a very long way from poll results, nasty political campaigns, football rivalries, product competition and mere games.

"Bandwidth" and other unhelpful metaphors

I have a friend and colleague on a non-profit board who frequently complains that our organization “lacks bandwidth” to do this or that.

The image has limited his perception of our problem. I have the feeling that he isn’t alone — that the metaphor, and other computer images like it, are common in organizations.

The problem with the bandwidth image is that it suggests a solution that

a) requires money (one buys more bandwidth) and

b) is probably technological (in this case, the size of a data pipeline).

The fact is that our organization doesn’t require more money (although that would be nice) and its needs aren’t technological.

Simply put, we need more concerned, dedicated volunteers to join us. A simple invitation or an alluring event might do the job.

I’m increasingly sensitive to how our chosen metaphors narrow and distort our perceptions and hence our options. They cramp our understanding and bar us from solutions.

Warnings about the dangers of choosing the wrong metaphor are hardly a new. Vis George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their “Metaphors We Live By.”

When we find ourselves stuck in our thinking it is often because our defining metaphor has led us astray.

The answer to the problem often lies in asking more questions: What metaphor are we relying on? Is it helpful or misleading? Does it unduly narrow our options? Do we need to change the metaphor?

What would happen if we untethered ourselves and used no metaphor at all?

Campus culture clash: Scholarship and Athletics

Be careful of the metaphor you choose. It can put a lock on your mind.

Take the case of NCAA Division I college sports and how the University of Oregon’s athletic program was described in a New York Times story today.

The story displays a parade of useless metaphors all trying to address a serious problem.

At UO they have a star quarterback, Jeremiah Masoli who has been suspended from the football program after pleading guilty to burglary. (He stole a computer, even though the football program lends laptops to players free. Steal a computer when you can have one for free? And this guy's on a SCHOLARship?)

Then we have the handshake agreement to pay the departing athletic director Mike Bellotti a cool $2.3 million to leave. This sounds like something that might happen at a high-stakes poker game or in golf match between very rich executives. But on a college campus?

There’s more. The University must make bond payments on a new $227 million basketball pavilion. Here a little context is in order: The University of Oregon’s faculty is grossly underpaid and tuition is skyrocketing.

Go figure.

And somewhere lurking in the background is one Phil Knight, NIKE gazillionaire. The story doesn’t delve into the NIKE influence, but clearly Phil lives by his own rules — and he applies them to UO.

Back to the push and pull in the Times story. The quotes from critics of UO athletics frame the issue in metaphors that lock out solutions.

“It’s time for the athletic department to do a little soul searching on how they can serve the university,” said one professor. “The athletic department is out of control here.”

Implied answer: search your soul, serve the university and get things under control.

Also, take three aspirin and go to bed.

A sports psychologist, tipsy on metaphors, says, “We have reached a tipping point. You have to have this homeostatic balance — you can’t just run athletics as an entity by itself. What I think is important is that the University of Oregon is a unique place — most alums and most donors want to see a healthy balance. They want to see a school jump up in the academic rankings and not just see a top-five football team. We are really at a crossroads. I would hope the new administration would see this as a new opportunity and not a Band-Aide.”

Band-Aides, tipping points, homeostasis, healthy balance, crossroads. Got that?

Let me try a straight-forward metaphor.

What we have on this campus — and all NCAA Division I campuses to some degree — is a clash of cultures.

The cultures don’t belong in the same place. They are at odds. They have utterly different goals and values.

Football is mass entertainment, not education. Education is learning, not spectator entertainment. Sure one can, and should, have elements of the other, but that’s where it ends.

Wide receivers “learn” how to run pass routes; physicists and lit majors should get a some entertaining exercise. A little Frisbee perhaps? A jog through an academic glen?

But that’s about it.

Let's stop pretending that high-profile, televised, hyper-commercial, monetized athletics as anything to do with higher education.

Just note the tension in the term “athletic scholarship.” Note the absurdity of calling a collegiate sports rivalry “The Civil War,” which, as students of history know, was a great national tragedy. Note how supposedly educated adults behave like buffoons at athletic events.

Note that this weekend we have headlines screaming that a Portland high school backetball star, Terrence Jones, has chosen to go to the University of Washington, where he will receive a full ride “scholarship.” We all know he will use the Seattle campus/stage as a stepping stone to the professional sports fame. Call me crazy but my guess is that he will not leave the great University of Washington versed in history, literature or philosophy.

Where are the best high school students going? And why don’t we, the general spectator public, care? Why isn’t it news? And will these scholars receive full-ride scholarships? And why will they stay and graduate? And what are their chances for employment out of college? Will they command the same seven-digit salaries that the likes of Terrence Jones will?

Two cultures. Different values. Worlds apart.

The universities, their administrations and their alumni need to choose one. They can’t live in both at once.

The answer is a “National Athletic Association” minus “Collegiate.” It’s where young, talented athletes go to prepare for the professional leagues. If those NAA teams want to locate in college towns and wear college colors and even be “sponsored” by the local university, fine.

But let’s not conflate the two.

Marching, cruising front-runners gain upper hand

Here we go again. Metaphors run amok!

Front page of today’s Oregonian. Lead story. Top right.

Let’s count the metaphors.

Ready?

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama cruised (1) past New York Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Wisconsin primary Tuesday, gaining the upper hand (2)* in a Democratic presidential race (3) for the ages (4?).

But wait! There’s more!

Second paragraph.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican front-runner (5) [actually a repeat of #3 above], won a pair of primaries, in Wisconsin and Washington, to continue his march (6) toward certain nomination.

At least we don’t have “battleground states,” “’air’ wars,” “war rooms” “near knockout blows,” “routs,” “thrashings” and “poundings.”

That’s good because the story quotes Obama talking about ending the war (the real one in Iraq). Perhaps the reporter, the AP’s David Espo, could see the reference coming and restrained himself. Best not to use political war metaphors in political stories mentioning war and its death and devastation.

Reality exposes war metaphors as the shams they are.

By the way, that’s why I’ve suggested on numerous occasions that the University of Oregon and Oregon State University declare peace and stop referring to their low-stakes athletic rivalries as a high-stakes “Civil War.”

Ducks! Beavers! Are you listening? Or are you just, well, Beavers and Ducks?

* The origin of “Gaining the upper hand” according to the American English Sports Games Idiom site is "the medieval gambling practice of throwing a stick to your opponent who would catch and hold it. Players would alternate hands around the stick until one won by having "the upper hand" on the stick, no room being left for another hand."

Come to think of it, I used to do this as a kid to determine which side would bat first. The thrown stick in question was our baseball bat. After the catch, we did the hand-over-hand. The kid left grasping the top had to pass one final test. If he could hold on to the bat as it was kicked by an opponent, his side was awarded "the upper hand" and the first at bat.

It seems like a long way from what Barack Obama did in Wisconsin on Tuesday.

Politics, press shun language of peace

In the last post I mused over why we never put political power in the hands of those following the path of non-violence and over-arching love.

Here's one reason: The bellicose language so widely used in political discourse.

"War rooms," "air wars" (broadcast ads), "political strongholds," "attack ads," "knock-out blows."

You've heard them all, particularly in the run-up to elections.

The media eat this stuff up. Nothing sells like conflict—so play it BIG.

Even so minor a political story as the one on the front page of today's Oregonian makes the news sound like a dispatch from Iraq. The story is about former Mayor Bud Clark's opposition to current Mayor Tom Potter's charter revision proposal.

Here, in the sub-head of the story about the wonkish measure: "The fight over a proposal to change Portland's form of government pits two old friends: Tom Potter and the man who used to hold the job."

"Fight"?

"Pits"?

On to the caption next to the photo showing Clark comfortably recuperating from an appendectomy: "Former Mayor Bud Clark...is battling again to preserve the city's unusual form of government. His foe this time? Mayor Tom Potter, who served as police chief under Clark."

"Battling"?

"Foe"?

Gimme a break.

These two old friends disagree. It's been know to happen. I disagree with a lot of my friends.

Headlines to the contrary, Clark and Potter are not clawing at each other in the trenches.

In fact, if you scan past the big print hype and read into the story itself, you find it is subdued, although "battling" is repeated and a "wound" analogy is wheeled out (remember that appendectomy?). The two men openly compliment each other. Says Potter of Clark: "He's one of the sweetest people I know." Clark, while opposing the charter revision, proclaims his personal trust of Potter.

But like most political stories, this one is packaged in martial terms. Politicians and the press are saying, in effect, the language of peace and reconciliation are not spoken here. "Don't even think about it. We don't."

Well, its time the public, politicians and the press all thought about it and started changing the language—which is the beginning of changing the way we think...and act.

What hope for unity and understanding and peace can their be if we don't?