A Phrase I Can’t Stand That Obama Uses All The Tiime

2 Responses

1. and “folks”

   Reply

2. But “folks” is used not by Obama alone, is not distinctive to him, while “that’s not who we are” is his alone. Furthermore, it is pregnant with meaning. It reflects his belief that he, Barack Obama, knows (and, as a splendid “improbable” exemplar, embodies) “what America is” (and what America is, in his view, has little to do with its being a child, in law, literature, language, of Europe)

   In the South, the use of “just folks” or just “folks” can be accepted — just — because it is not a case of deliberate folksiness but comes naturally. Outside the South, “folks” is used by politicians to show that they are Friends of the People, and Obama does it, not only for that reason, to make sure no one thinks he thinks that he’s a Gannett-Hall smartie, and then the word also signals that he, Obama, from Hawaii, maintains a linguistic link to those Afro-Americans (I don’t like the word but I’m aware that “blacks” is not quite right either, and for some, for complicated and sometimes unclear reasons, more offensive) for whom that word still is, even outside the the south, in use.

   The worst offenders in the “folks” business are advertisers, who use it because they think it softens up the possible customers, in the same way that they believe that immediately addressing someone by that someone’s first name, without so much as a by-your-leave, establishes a phony warmth — that will soften opposition to the sales-pitch. “Well, Jim, have you folks thought about aluminum siding and what you would save on painting costs?”

   Reply