I made some passing references in the recent threads, but didn't explain very well. Now I've found an interesting but obscenely long New York Times article that sums it up, entitled The Framing Wars. Read the whole thing because the author gets into criticisms of the idea at the end. Or don't. Whatever.

For me, it ties into my slight obsession with advertising and its effective use, which was kicked off by two Frontline programs (viewable here and here), this NYT article, and the sheer number of people I know who've said "Communism works on paper, but not in the real world" word-for-word, and connects, more broadly, with the ever cliche memes. I've become increasingly convinced that people are more suggestible and less rational than they think they are, that the very idea of democracy might be fatally flawed in the face of increasing sophisticated methods of influencing the electorate, and that I've probably never had an original thought in my life.

So, yeah. Click on some of the links. Give your thoughts on the matter, which are actually not your thoughts, but someone else's.