Your Voice | How Frank Luntz is using last week's incident for his benefit

I was a student of Melvyn Hammarberg’s when Mel invited Frank Luntz to give his first guest lecture on Penn campus, and later one of Frank’s students for his first two official classes at Penn. This is why I’m laughing so hard at the prank he’s playing on the Penn campus with his feigned outrage.

Back in the early ’90s, Frank was open about how tickled pink he was to have the Penn adjunct professorship on his resume, and extremely admiring of the guest speakers he brought in who said they would do anything to win. It’s 20 years later, so either Frank no longer needs Penn laurels, or more likely, he’s calculated the exact dollar value that a public argument with a “liberal” university will add to his speaking fees.

He’s playing the Penn community for that media bump. He’s calculated exactly what to say to The Daily Pennsylvanian to get maximized free media in the GOP echo chamber, and if he has to steamroll the journalistic career of an undergrad for his own short-term benefit, that fits both his track record and his stated philosophy back before he was an August Talking Head.

Regarding “off the record” status, he’s right that it’s a massive sin in Washington — and he damn well knows that the penalty for breaking it is a future code of silence against the reporter or media outlet, not against the sponsoring institution. But in academia, we don’t trade silence for access; a true academic participates in open discussion without setting ground rules intended to buff his own ego. Frank is a seriously smart guy, so I’m certain he knows this. On the other hand, Frank’s made a very good living saying whatever it takes to win, and damn the consequences for anyone else.

Finally, since I was a student of Frank’s and not a journalist, I never made note of whether our extended discussions at Smokey Joe’s after every class were on or off the record. My paraphrasing of his views come from my hazy recollections of what was said there after a few pints. He was a hell of a professor and an interesting conversationalist, and back then, it wasn’t hard to get the man to talk at length.

Jeff Porten is a 1990 College graduate. His email address is jporten@alumni.upenn.edu.

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