Lakoff, a Chomskyian-schooled linguist, wrote a book about political communication, part of which analyzed framing of political messages. First, there is the George Lakoff thesis of Metaphors We Live By. Yet there is also reason for believing that the authors of Forget the Alamo would really like for their readers to Remember the Alamo. In an act of insouciant sacrilege, he urinated on one of the walls of the Alamo (xx-xxi). On 19 February 1982, a drunken Ozzie Osborne clad in a ripped, green evening gown stumbled from his hotel suite into Alamo Plaza with a bottle of Courvoisier in hand. Another clue about the title in support of the insolence hypothesis is contained in the introduction. As for the element of insolence, witness the cover art: the title Forget the Alamo is superimposed over a background of the Alamo Church with a cheesy red-spray-paint effect, replete with a running drip from the bottom of the first “E.” Since the semiotics of book covers is not an area of competence for me, I assume that this lack of subtlety with symbolism was intended to capture the attention of a general audience. After all, the ultimate insult to a historical idea is that it should be forgotten. Another possibility is dismissive insolence. Therefore, it makes sense that a trio of authors critical of the prevailing Alamo narrative would pay homage to an earlier group of Alamo-narrative critics. About twenty years ago, Con Safo sponsored several exhibits under a common title of “Forget the Alamo” (270). Con Safo, “a collective of Texas-based Chicano artists” published criticism of history through writing and visual arts of the common post-1960 Alamo narrative.
What are Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford attempting to convey through this title? One possibility is an homage. Reviewed: Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford, Forget The Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth (New York: Penguin, 2021).įorget the Alamo is a book calculated to provoke controversy.
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