Last week, I blogged about a Republican political mailing whose “cover shows a Bible with the word ‘BANNED’ across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word ‘ALLOWED.’ The mailing tells West Virginians to ‘vote Republican to protect our families’ and defeat the ‘liberal agenda.'” (The quote is from an AP story.)
Some readers complained, quite harshly, that this mailing was “dishonest,” because of course liberals aren’t trying to ban the Bible. I was skeptical: It seemed to me that in context this would be understood as referring not to outright criminalization of the Bible (precisely because that’s so highly implausible), but rather to the exclusion of the Bible and Bible verses (such as the Ten Commandments) from public school curricula and from posting in government buildings and parks.
I’ve thought a bit more about this over the weekend. In response to my request for the full text of the mailer, readers sent me this page and this one; the covers had already been posted here. Readers also pointed to two other uses of “banned”: (1) the American Library Association’s use of “banned books” to refer to books that were merely excluded from public school curricula, and (2) the references to a “stem cell research ban” to describe the Bush Administration’s decision to substantially limit federal funding for stem cell research. (See, for instance, this Kerry press release, and the Spinsanity criticism of the “stem cell research ban” locution; thanks to Jim Christiansen and John Vecchione for reminding me about the stem cell research point.)
Here’s what I’ve tentatively come to on this. First, I agree the use of “ban” in any of these situations is imprecise and potentially misleading — it may make people assume that someone really is flatly outlawing something, rather than just denying it government funding or a place in government schools or on government property.
But, second, whether the usage is actually misleading depends on how people are likely to perceive it. If the literal meaning is clearly extremely implausible (such as that the liberals would actually criminalize private possession and distribution of Bibles), then people are more likely to recognize the alternative meaning. And this is especially so if the usage is in a medium that’s known for hyperbole (such as political mailers), then I suspect that people will discount it in some measure. This is why, having read both the cover separately and the cover and the insides together, it seems to me that the flyer is likely to be understood as making a plausible allegation — that liberals are seeking to ban the Bible from public schools (at least in most contexts) and from government-run displays — rather than a wildly implausible one (that they’re seeking a total outlawing of the Bible).
Some of my correspondents suggested that the mailers would reach such a partisan and unreasonable audience that the readers would believe that liberals are really trying to prohibit anyone from owning or distributing Bibles. That just strikes me as implausible — but in any event, presumably anyone who believes this of the liberals is already a very firm conservative, and one who’s likely to vote against liberals. The swing voters, or the ones who might not show up, are probably not going to make such an extreme assumption about liberals.
Finally, I think that the talk of the supposedly already implemented “stem cell research ban” is more likely to be misleading, especially if it’s in a supposedly neutral press account but also if it’s in a political press release. A total ban on stem cell research, federally funded or not, is (unfortunately) not implausible. Many people who haven’t been following this debate might reasonably assume that a “stem cell research ban” is referring to a true criminalizing of stem cell research, and might thus come away with a mistaken impression of what the Administration has done. But I don’t think that many people would reasonably assume that the “liberal agenda”/Bible/”banned” claim is indeed referring to a true criminalizing of Bible possession and distribution.
(Note that if the claim were simply that the “conservative agenda” would include a total ban on stem cell research, this would not be unreasonable — I’m not sure that a second Bush Administration or a heavily Republican Senate would do this, but it’s possible that they might. I object here to claims that the Bush Administration has implemented a stem cell research ban.)
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