We the folks, in order to form a more perfect union...

I have recently started noticing, I mean really noticing, the adoption of the word "folks" in modern American political discourse, where the word "people" was once employed. And, although I wholehearted support him, I am saddened to see Barak Obama also falling into the clutches of this practice. Here 's what Susan Jacoby, author of "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" and "The Age of American Unreason" had to say on the subject in an interview with Bill Moyers:

BILL MOYERS: You have a powerful section in here on what's happened to our political language. How, for example, politicians so often talk these days not about people but ab-

SUSAN JACOBY: Folks.

BILL MOYERS: --folks-

SUSAN JACOBY: Folks.

BILL MOYERS: --about the folks. What's wrong that?

SUSAN JACOBY: What's wrong with it is folks used to be a colloquialism. It was the kind of thing that you'd talk about mostly in rural areas, mostly in the south and the Midwest. People talked about folks. It was not considered suitable for public speech. If you used it in the classroom your teacher would, you know, would get after you, because it wasn't considered appropriate language.

But think about this though. Think about our political language in the past and today. Just think about The Gettysburg Address. We highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this government, of the folks, by the folks, and for the folks, shall not perish from the earth. This is patronizing. It's talking down to people. I read all of FDR's fireside chats where he-- I could not find a single reference to folks. You know why? Because the addressing people as folks is talking down to them. It's not dignifying them. When you call people citizens you're calling them to rise-- calling on them to rise above the lowest common denominator. You really need to think about what's being said when people are called folks. It's encouraging you not to do too much. And, you know, when I--

BILL MOYERS: Not to expect anything special.

SUSAN JACOBY: Not to expect anything special. And people are terribly scared of saying, "We really need to expect more."

Transcript
Video

Also, Stephen Colbert has done a brilliant interview with Susan Jacoby. Not to be missed.

No cable TV in Greece

I know I 'm not the only one who has wondered why cable TV never happened in Greece. We talk about it here all the time. Well, it seems we 're not the only ones. Here 's an excerpt from an OECD Report from over a decade ago:

The policies of some OECD governments seem set to increase the ownership of cable infrastructure by monopoly PTOs [public telecommunication operators]. In Greece, although service is yet to commence, a recently passed law mandates that the development, installation, operation and management of any kind of infrastructure for cable television broadcasting is exclusively the right of the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE) in conjunction with the broadcasting monopoly (ERT). Because it takes several years to roll out an alternative network, the current policy in Greece will close-off the potential for competition at the local level for over a decade. This would substantially eliminate the benefits local service competition would bring to the development of information infrastructures in Greece.

The OECD Report on Regulatory Reform: vol. I Sectoral Studies (OECD, 1997), p. 53

Indeed, eleven years later the prospect of cable TV in Greece is nowhere on the visible horizon.