The Cliché Community

But let’s turn the page! 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-clichés and cant phrases for everybody to start using all at once–or better, so we could all return to using the perfectly fine words we were using before we popped these new verbal pacifiers into our mouths. 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. Nobody reached out back then either. 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 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. In just these two instances alone, the phrase can mean pursue, meet with, cultivate, invite, persuade, or suck up to. It can mean so many things it doesn’t mean anything.

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. Asking for something sounds so confrontational; reaching out sounds so sweet. Most of our insta-clichés are wussy-friendly, meant to rub the blunt edges from language: share with instead of tell, for example. It’s why every group of individuals, no matter how various or loosely tethered, is suddenly called a community. 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). It goes without saying that the best of these communities are nurturing and sustainable, but, in our New Age purr, we say it anyway. And why tell a kid he’s doing wrong when you can tell him he’s behaving inappropriately? Wrong sounds judgmental. And if you wonder whether your colleague likes something or approves of it, better to ask instead if he’s comfortable with that. Discomfort is bad–inappropriate, even.

I suppose it’s our own insecurity that sets us off using such phrases so compulsively; we gain confidence repeating a new word that everybody else is repeating. Often they erupt as mere verbal hiccups, inserted into a sentence unconsciously (always unconsciously!). 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.

And when did everyone sud-denly decide to use issue as a synonym for difficulty or problem or failing? 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 could list dozens more, and not just because I’m grouchy as hell. 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? World peace, maybe! Out goes granular, traction, takeaway .  .  . and pivot. Watch for pivot–as both noun and verb, it’s going to be big. Already, in the Chicago Tribune this month, Obama has pivoted five times at least. Even in this magazine, a writer recently described Obama “executing a rhetorical pivot.” And what’s the name of that exhausted wordslinger, that tapped-out hack who reached for the nearest cliché in hopes of sounding like everyone else? Here:

ANDREW FERGUSON