Make it Work: Immigration Reform and Fashion Reality Shows

Maybe it's because the Project Runway season finale is tomorrow and I've just got fashion fever but when I read the Luntz article I couldn't help but picture Tim Gunn in front of a poorly made dress. The way the authors repeated "words that work" and "words that don't work" made it seem like their points weren't valid. Like they were a poorly made dress but with only one day left they have no choice but to add a fancy hem to distract the judges. It gave me the impression that this is a how to manual on how to trick the public into agreeing with you. The authors pointed out that by saying certain phrases you can bring people in and get them to agree with you but other words turn them away. It shows that politicians can gain a lot of support by various groups of people by manipulating their words. Although I found the article very humorous with its oversized pie charts and odd language I did agree with a lot of what they were saying which surprised me. I think that we should work on preventing illegal immigration without hurting legal immigrants. The problem is that many of the laws passed to prevent illegal immigration is hurting legal ones too such as the English only laws.
I found "The Framing of Immigration" article very boring although once I reread it and actually understood it I realized that I do agree with it. The article was very technical and therefore not very appealing but I did agree with the author that you have to first define a problem before you can solve it. And these words that people throw around like illegal immigrants can take on many different meanings to different people and it is important to clarify ones intended meaning. Besides it being so technical, another major problem I had with this article though was that I did not understand why the author first talked about lobbying reform. I mean I get what they were saying but I thought it was unnecessary if the main point of the essay was illegal immigration reform.
Overall I found the writing styles of both articles unappealing. The Luntz one was hokey and comical and the Lakoff piece was extremely technical. However once I stripped the the outer language and got to the meat of the pieces I found that I could agree with points from both articles. Which I found very interesting, they were written by people of opposing view points but I found that they expressed their views in a certain way that I found both agreeable. If that makes any sense at all.