The following election analysis is contributed by Brendan Sweeney. Brendan has been involved in grassroots media activism for the last six years. He has worked as a producer and reporter at WBAI, Pacifica Radio and Free Speech Radio News.

On Thursday, the NYT ran an insightful piece on word usage by prominent speakers at both national parties’ conventions, tallying the number of times flash language and concepts were referenced in speeches. Click below for an abridged version of this NYT analysis, expanded to include terms more directly tied to feminist movement.

Surprise, surprise nobody appropriated the term “feminist” or even mentioned “reproductive rights”, “abortion” or even being “pro-choice”. I suppose that Democrats view this as a rail-splitter issue, and Republicans, well, just look at their party platform.

Ten of the twenty Republican mentions of “women” were some derivation of “men and women of the armed forces” (compared to nine out of seventeen by Democrats). The Republicans did not mention “class” once. While Democrats mentioned “class” 13 times, twelve of these references were to the “middle class” (it appears that they prefer to use vague terms like “two Americas” rather than more direct terms like “class war” and “class-exploitation”… one can dream can’t they?).

“Sex” appeared only once, in an offhand opening comment by VP Cheney: “People tell me that Senator Edwards got picked for his good looks, his sex appeal, and his great hair. I say to them - how do you think I got the job?” Funny line… asshole.

Finally, we can witness a clear Orwellian-logic behind the signature speeches of the RNC. It is striking that Republican speakers used the term “peace” almost as many times as they did “war” (of course with no mention of peace protesters detained by the NYPD). Indeed, the GOP has consistently returned to “war-is-peace”, “aggressor-is-victim”, “misogynist-is-liberator” narratives. Mr. Orwell would be impressed…

Original source/inspiration: Ericson, Matthew. “Graphic: The Words Speakers Use” NYT, Sept2, 2004. P4. See http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/trail/index.html.