In last Monday's Salon, Jennifer Buckendorff links
two ideas in an interesting way: Her article The Oprah Way suggests we
need to portray progressive values in a person, emotional way, and
suggests that one vehicle to do so is through the use of stories. She
explains how Oprah has told the story of gay interior designer Nate
Berkus, who lost his life partner in the recent Asian tsunami, in a
very engaging, sincere and heroic way. By doing so, she has changed the
perception of many of her viewers -- including non-progressives -- of
gays from a stereotype of stridency, excessive showiness and anger to a
new archetype of humility, courage and sensitivity.
Buckendorff suggests that such stories can actually change people's
values. I'm not sure I would go so far, since I think values are pretty
deep-rooted, but I certainly think stories can change perceptions,
smash stereotypes, and enable accommodation of ideas and ideals that
strike a common chord, and that's worth doing.
There have been always been best-sellers about people, often ordinary
people, who have chosen a different way and demonstrated universal
human values -- bravery, love, perseverance, self-sacrifice, patience,
commitment, altruism. One recent book even told stories exclusively
about people who quit their wage-slave jobs and started second careers
making the world, or at least their corner of it, a better place. Why
not compile a story-book that tells heroic and honest tales of
progressives, not big-name political leaders, just average Joes and
Janes who quietly represent these universal human values and who also
represent progressive values, and whose stories are told in engaging,
emotionally-powerful terms? Each chapter could present a new
progressive archetype, and in so doing smash an old progressive
stereotype. I think Lakoff would approve.
If we were to do so, what would some of those archetypes be, and whose
stories would they tell? What future Obamas are today quietly
representing progressive values in ways that can reach everyone, and
start to draw us together in positive ways, in common cause?
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