"Tavis accepted the generous offer of Frank Luntz, a helpful Republican pollster, to explain the reactions of an African American focus group, supposedly standing in for all of us"
Finally no presidential debate or forum is complete without its own spin cycle, its explanation of what the candidates said and what we should be hearing. So Tavis accepted the generous offer of Frank Luntz, a helpful Republican pollster, to explain the reactions of an African American focus group, supposedly standing in for all of us. Tavis himself explained it in a Democracy Now interview last Thursday:
Frank Luntz used to work for Newt Gingrich. He's the Republican propagandist who gave us the 1994 "Contract For America," and who came up with the idea of calling the estate tax the "death tax." His latest book is titled "Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear." Who could be better qualified, Tavis must have asked himself, to interpret the African American reaction to this historic political exchange?"What Mr. Luntz has been asked to do, what he quite frankly offered to do, was to set up a people-metering room where some thirty African Americans -- they're all black, they're all Democrats, they're all voters -- are going to be asked what they think of the debate, the forum, as it unfolds... we'll be able to read the data as to what they thought about every person on the stage answering these questions... Mr. Luntz has been a guest on my program a couple times, as has Newt Gingrich and any number of other Republicans... And the role he's playing is helping us to understand what the top line is for what these African American Democrats had to say."
"People metering" is when you give each person in your focus group a little panel with five or six buttons that might be marked "strongly agree," "somewhat agree, neutral," "somewhat disagree," and "strongly disagree" or a similar range. Your group members push one button at all times, and you electronically monitor the results from second to second as the candidates talk. It's a glorified applause meter.
Leave it to Tavis Smiley to turn a Democratic presidential forum into a star-studded episode of "Showtime At The Apollo."
It gives me no pleasure to call Brother Tavis out like this. But giving us a Republican-spun, sound-byte driven game show front-loaded with self-important speeches and explained to us by a pollster who worked for Rudy Guliani's last three campaigns is not a service to black America, or the black consensus. It does not showcase African America's political concerns, it trivializes them. What a letdown.
- CBC Monitor senior correspondent Leutisha Stills can be reached at leutishastills(at)hotmail.com
- Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report
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