Kirmizi_ada

Who will read to us at the Inauguration of President Barack H. Obama? A bold healer, an arresting critic, someone for whom words are sacred and magic creatures?

No ma'am, not yet. We want to hear—at long last and in public— from the consultant who gave us "energy exploration," "climate change," "the death tax," "the surge," "religious liberty", and "weapons of mass destruction." Using Roman Jakobsen's writings on "poetic language" and Roland Barthes on "myth," Frank Luntz has earned a great deal of money nationalizing a poetry of cynicism and emotional bankruptcy. He has used his PhD from Oxford to export the nihilism of neo-conservative think tanks into the compulsory lexicon of American public life. He has rewired the cortex of the imperial spokespersona—crafting policy language that makes poor people into greedy loafers, racism into a clerical error, crude oil into a global elixir. No wonder John McCain always had such a hard time deciphering his own tele-prompter.

Sad as it is, Frank Luntz is the poet laureate of our decade. So it's time he gets up out of that consultant's chair and read us his collected works from start to finish. For instance, he could remind us of his 2002 memo to President Bush about how "Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field."

As these, his last words, echo across the National Mall, millions of faces will stare blankly back. Then, as Luntz walks off the stage, we can all swear in President Obama, unclench our fists and listen. To Jorie Graham or Ntozake Shange, Anne Carson or Yusef Komunyakaa. To a fearless and venerable tender of words—for a new era that is not up for sale.

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