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