Come On: Stop Thinking of the Elephant
Ten years ago, my “Minor Details” column raved about the best book to come out of any political season before or since: “Stop whatever you’re doing. Drop whatever you’re reading – even if it’s one of my books. The most important political book of the year is out and it’s a $10 paperback of only 124 pages. (So, you know Bill Clinton didn’t write it.) “I thought Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (Metropolitan Books) was the most insightful book of 2004. It’s still number two, but the new book by well-known Berkeley Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics, George Lakoff, has trumped it. Entitled Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (Chelsea Green), this popularly written manual with a forward by Howard Dean, is, as the cover says, 'The Essential Guide for Progressives.'” Ten years later, let me repeat: it was, and still is the essential guide for progressives, especially in its