THE CLICH? COMMUNITY
FERGUSON, ANDREW
Casual THE CLICH? COMMUNITY I ’ve been wondering: Can you push back if you’re reaching out? It seems impossible, doesn’t it? How about if you’re going forward? Pushing back while you’re going...
...we gain confidence repeating a new word that everybody else is repeating...
...And what’s the name of that exhausted wordslinger, that tapped-out hack who reached for the nearest clich...
...World peace, maybe...
...I suppose it depends on your takeaway...
...Pushing back while you’re going forward would probably make it impossible to reach out, especially if you’re pivoting at the same time...
...If you’re comfortable with your takeaway, I do hope you choose to share it with us...
...If we suddenly banned each of them from our language, we might be forced into carefully considering what we’re saying or writing, and who knows what Utopian dreams might be realized then...
...Paul’s right that the times are ever-changing, but I wish they’d change a little more quickly, so we could get a new set of insta-clich?s and cant phrases for everybody to start using all at once—or better, so we could all return to using the perfectly fi ne words we were using before we popped these new verbal pacifi ers into our mouths...
...And when did everyone sud denly decide to use issue as a synonym for diffi culty or problem or failing...
...But that’s how things are in this ever-changing world in which, as Paul McCartney famously sang, we live in...
...Whether you share it or not probably depends on what community you choose to be a member of...
...To be part of a community that wasn’t nurturing or sustainable would be inappropriate...
...I must have missed the memo —just as I missed the memo instructing every political reporter to begin saying election cycle instead of campaign or election...
...I hope it’s a nurturing community...
...We spoke to, consulted with, entreated, implored, included, gestured toward, negotiated with—all those common, perfectly usable phrases, many of them with quite different meanings, that have been mothballed since reached out hit the scene...
...In just these two instances alone, the phrase can mean pursue, meet with, cultivate, invite, persuade, or suck up to...
...And if you wonder whether your colleague likes something or approves of it, better to ask instead if he’s comfortable with that...
...In the last week I’ve read that Barack Obama is reaching out to new constituencies in search of votes and that he hopes to reach out to the mullahs in Iran in search of God knows what...
...Nobody reached out back then either...
...But let’s turn the page...
...And sustainable...
...I could list dozens more, and not just because I’m grouchy as hell...
...Out goes granular, traction, takeaway . . . and pivot...
...In the last couple days I’ve read not only of the vegetarian community, which would include both Gandhi and Hitler, but also of the Catholic community (actually, it’s a church) and the conservative community (which lumps me with Richard Viguerie—no thanks...
...Going forward, like its variant moving forward, adds no meaning to a sentence, but here it comes, from a single evening’s TV-viewing last week: “Going forward, the economy is on the minds of most voters . . . ” “Alternative energy is very important going forward . . . ” “Our challenge going forward is to see this globalized . . . ” I’m not crazy about globalized either...
...I suppose it’s our own insecurity that sets us off using such phrases so compulsively...
...I’m sure we’re on the same page...
...Here: ANDREW FERGUSON...
...Most of our insta-clich?s are wussy-friendly, meant to rub the blunt edges from language: share with instead of tell, for example...
...Asking for something sounds so confrontational...
...in hopes of sounding like everyone else...
...Often they erupt as mere verbal hiccups, inserted into a sentence unconsciously (always unconsciously...
...Think how much simpler and straightforward the world was before people started pushing back against something and instead just resisted it or responded to it or answered it...
...It can mean so many things it doesn’t mean anything...
...Well, maybe you’re not comfortable with that...
...It’s why every group of individuals, no matter how various or loosely tethered, is suddenly called a community...
...Wrong sounds judgmental...
...Even in this magazine, a writer recently described Obama “executing a rhetorical pivot...
...And why tell a kid he’s doing wrong when you can tell him he’s behaving inappropriately...
...Reaching out has been imported (unconsciously, always unconsciously) from the world of therapy—not from the stern (if loopy) vocabulary of the Freudians, but the soft, sandalwood purr of the New Age...
...Are you comfortable with that...
...Watch for pivot—as both noun and verb, it’s going to be big...
...It goes without saying that the best of these communities are nurturing and sustainable, but, in our New Age purr, we say it anyway...
...Already, in the Chicago Tribune this month, Obama has pivoted fi ve times at least...
...Discomfort is bad—inappropriate, even...
...reaching out sounds so sweet...
Vol. 13 • June 2008 • No. 36
