Words are like pharmaceuticals. Use them as directed on the label.

Pick a George W. Bush quote. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America—on September the 11th.”

And here’s another: “It’s very important for folks to understand that when there’s more trade, there’s more commerce.”

Neither makes sense but that’s not my point. It’s the damnable “folks.” In the first case, “folks” refers to Iraqi guerrillas (a more accurate label than “insurgents,” which is a dry-as-dust word meaningless in the context of Iraq). And in the second case, they mean voters, regular people, the non-rich, the shmoes.

“Folks” was appropriate when Jed Clampitt and Jethro Bodine used it on The Beverly Hillbillies, but isn’t it odd how Bush, in charge of a war, refers to the enemy as “folks.” It’s even odder than his implication that he is a man of the people, given that he has spent his life proving otherwise.

We are all in this together, as Red Green likes to say, but we’re not all folks. Some of Bush’s so-called folks are dirt poor, some are moving up to desperate, then to worried, to smug, to rich as Croesus, this last meaning Bush’s voter base. I can imagine a sheriff in Louisiana in the early 1960s talking about “black folks” and “white folks.” One kind of folk gets lynched, the other doesn’t.

I wouldn’t have worried about this coy attempt to mislead, but I recently heard a Canadian MP use “folks” at a big fundraiser for the distinctly poor. I felt my dander get distinctly up. It means the word has spread, all politicians will begin using it, it will enter the Canadian idiom, and I have lost the battle even before it began. This is true of all fights about language, as the Académie Française has not learned over the years, but it still gnaws.

War spawns Newspeak

Here’s another word chosen to mislead in one case, to lessen suffering in another: fallen, as in “fallen soldiers.” When this word first appeared in recent headlines, I assumed a Canadian soldier fell, but tragically onto a landmine. But no, he was dead. Stephen Harper likes the word because it muffles the effect of the news that a good Canadian has died in a pointless war that Harper favours.

Journalists refer to the “fallen” the way funeral directors refer to the “loved one.” But they are dead. “Fallen” soldiers don’t “come home,” as the headlines would have it. They are flown home in a casket. They will never brighten their families’ lives again; their deaths in a distant land were horrible and lonely and it’s wrong to sugar-coat that with cowardly language.

It also puzzles me when the U.S. forces in Iraq are called a “surge.” It’s a troop buildup. Once they’re out of the White House briefing room, reporters can call it what it is. Why don’t they? And armed Blackwater employees in Iraq are not “contractors.” They are mercenaries. Contractors are the people I hire to fail to sand my flooring.

War spawns Newspeak because reporters are spoon-fed information. “Embedded” refers to a reporter under the control of the military, whether he welcomes that warm berth or not. He’s an insect in amber, he’s stuck, and it leads to a sort of Stockholm Syndrome that can’t be good for readers.

Furthermore, “partisan” has become an American code word to refer to Democrats who speak up. It’s a shame because the partisans of the Second World War were the glorious Resistance. Now they’re beaten-down liberals?

My local paper, the shy and sweet-natured Toronto Star, has begun referring to murders in “east-end” Toronto, where I live. I’m puzzled because my sleepy, slightly shabby neighbourhood, the Beaches, is not like Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It sets records for dull. Wow, two guys got shot in the Beaches lord almighty let’s sell up and move to Flannery, Sask. But when the paper mentions the intersection where the two men were shot to death, it’s inevitably in Scarborough. It seems the Star has a policy of not calling Scarborough “Scarborough,” probably because Scarborough politicians complained that it makes the neighbourhood look bad.

Which it does, because Scarborough is a bad neighbourhood. I no longer read about east-end murders because I am sick of being startled by news of bloodshed that didn’t happen two streets over. Twisting words for corporate purposes is a good way to wear readers out.

Woe to celebs who get Oscar noms

My other objection is to diminutives. And here is where I leave my love of precision behind and move into the realm of the curmudgeon. I can almost feel my neck reddening and thickening and my hairy arm reaching for a Moosehead. But hear me out.

David Sedaris once wrote about his dating standards, saying he would not go out with anyone who didn’t say words in full. No “59th and Lex” and definitely no “Mad Ave.” The essence of Sedaris’s genius is that we agree, while also agreeing with his assessment of himself as a pest and a pain for having such rules.

An Oscar nomination is not a “nom.” It’s not a “nod” either, but at least that’s a word. A phenomenon is not a “phenom,” either, and celebrities are not “celebs.” I understand that words are chosen to fit in a short headline, which explains why newspapers are the only places where you see “laud” and “woes” any more. But what did people say before “celebrity”? Famous people and newspapers have co-existed since the 16th century.

Pedestrian matters do not become suddenly! exciting! by having the word “solutions” placed after them. What are bed and bath solutions? Sheets and towels, am I right?

“Fashionistas” is a tragic word for tragic people. For just as hairdressers always have terrible hair, people in the fashion industry make a point of looking dreadful. They want to be noticed rather than admired. As for people who say “hubby” and “gal” out loud, I have no words for them.

Here endeth the lesson.

This Week

I just read David Peace’s Nineteen Seventy-Four. He’s a cooler than cool British thriller/mystery writer whose new book, Tokyo Year Zero, will be the making of him. His knack with incomplete sentences labels him as the British James Ellroy or an Irvine Welsh with intricate plots. He’s very sweary, and only Peace can get away with those one-word paragraphs favoured by the school of hard men. He came up with the idea of placing each of his novels in a particular year from the dregs of the late 20th century, with all the real-life details that so date it. Nineteen Seventy-Four is full of strikes, Lord Lucan and the Bay City Rollers, plus the compacted grunge of postwar Britain. I enjoyed it while knowing I would get a head-butt at the end as my pace picked up: I was going to put the book down, having been thrilled, disgusted and made to admire, but would not have the faintest idea who the killer was. I somehow suspect he wasn’t the pedophile in the underground cavern coated with feathers and with his genitals missing. Perhaps this is Peace’s fault but I suspect it is mine.

In contrast, Douglas Coupland’s new novel, The Gum Thief, is about the lives of Staples employees. It’s very good. People who suspect their lives are dull should be reassured that no one’s life is truly dull. It’s all catnip.