Phrases To Make You Oh So Proud

1/ Giving Back to the Community:


This is one of those lovely ditties which has been transmogrified. It started, near as I can tell, with athletes who were making a shameful amount of money for playing baseball or basketball or whatever, and they spent some money on athletic equipment for neighborhood kids or something of that ilk and they said they were, “Giving back to the community.” Which meant: “I’m so filthy rich, and feeling a little guilty about it, so I’m giving some back to the people who pay way too much to come out to see a game so I can get this outrageously inappropriate salary and live in a twenty-five room house far from the inner city where these kids and whatever parents may be available to them live and struggle to make ends meet. So I’ll spring for some balls or bats or whatever the sports companies who endorse me will sell me for cost.”

All that was bad enough, but now you’ve got all sorts of shady characters wanting to use the phrase.

I was at a meeting where some doctor was trying to persuade other doctors to take call for free for the emergency room, so his group could keep control of the hospital and ensure his own revenue stream would not be impaired. He said this would be a good opportunity for the doctors to donate their time to a worth cause, “To give back to the community.” Of course, what it really came down to, was he wanted the other doctors to give more to him, but giving back to the community sounded so much better. Then one of the other docs stood up and said, “I give back to the community every time I walk through my office door, every time I accept five dollars from Medicaide for a twenty minute office visit, every time I answer my beeper at three in the morning for some patient who just ran out of her pills and wants me to call the all night pharmacy, every time I write out my check to the bank to pay off my medical school loans. I’ve given back to the community more than I ever intended to. It’s time the community gave back a little to me.”

So GBTTC is a red flag. It usually means, you are about to be screwed again.

It’s a kissing cousin of “Volunteerism.” Ever hear some politician who voted against day care for kids of working mothers, or voted against support for food for the poor start talking about how all that should be done through the private sector, until it’s pointed out there’s plenty of stuff like that the private sector doesn’t want to touch with a twenty foot poll, so then he says, “Well, we need some good hearted volunteers to take this on?” Which means, he’s not willing to stick his neck out and pay for these necessary services, these safety nets, but maybe the churches or some local club will do it. But virtually every time you have some well meaning church member serving food to the homeless, cleaning up a park, scrubbing graffiti off a wall, that’s a job he is taking away from somebody who could be getting paid for it, making an honest dollar for work which, if it’s important enough to get done is important enough to pay for.

I see a volunteer and I see a scab, some well meaning soul who hasn’t thought about what might be going through the mind of the unemployed stiff who would love to get paid for that service of cleaning or serving or working on infrastructure that volunteer is devaluing by doing for free.

2/ Role Model

Oh, here’s a good one. Started in sports like so many other stupid clichés. Babe Ruth ought to be a role model. In America, we can’t have somebody in public life who is simply good at one thing, like hitting home runs without his being good at everything, flawless in character, loving to children and dogs, faithful to his wife, proud to fight for his country, giving back to the community, volunteering to pick up trash by the river and donating to church charities. A freaking paragon of virtue.

It’s not enough to hit home runs.

If he did it on steroids, what kind of role model can he be for kids? Well maybe kids can learn that you can be a hero at home plate but pretty flawed in a lot of other ways. Maybe that would teach kids a more complex world view than, “He hits home runs. He good man. Be like him.”

Kids, most kids, are probably smarter than that. It does a severe disservice to kids to present them with “Role models.” We deprive kids of all sorts of complexity in their thinking when we start yammering about, “Role models.”

We ought to be feeding kids a steady diet of “The Wire.” That would teach them about “Role models.”

We ought to be telling kids about guys who are nice to their dogs and wives and children but they are commandants of concentration camps and so when you look at someone who seems admirable in some ways, look again and see if you can see the blood stains on his hands.


3/ Support Our Troops

All you have to do is buy the $2 decal for your car and you are an instant patriot. That’s actually more than is usually asked of you to display and reaffirm your patriotism. Usually, the biggest patriotic duty is removing your baseball cap at the ballpark and singing the national anthem with tears running down your check and across your American flag enamel pin on your T shirt and then you can go home and cheat on your income taxes.

4/ Utilize

Why use a cheap easy to spell word like “Use,” when you can utilize a 50 cent word like “Utilize.” Hemingway tried to kill “Utilize” in the Sun Also Rises, and he did a pretty good job, but people don’t read much any more and certainly not The Sun Also Rises, so the weed grew back.
5/ Reticent

Politicians, radio personalities, virtually everyone except people who went to Catholic schools, or maybe the better public schools say someone was reticent to take action, or reticent to do this or that rather than “hesistant.” Of course, people can be reticent when they are hesitant or just too smart to speak.