Bad Language: "Ordinary Americans"

[mattclearing]

I just got a fundraising email from a Senator that says: "The urgency of these 2006 elections cannot be overstated. The Bush Administration and their allies in Congress have demonstrated time and again that they are out-of-touch and out-of-step with the needs of ordinary Americans."

Does anyone consider themselves "ordinary?" Is this a good way to appeal to voters?

How about, "working" Americans, or even simply "Americans" ?

It's not just this fundraising appeal...the "ordinary Americans" line has been SOP for the Democratic Party for awhile as far as I can recall, but it sounds condescending to me now that I think about it.

It's like saying, "The Republican Party doesn't deliver for you, the little people out there. We will!"

:eyes:

[Squatch]

1. It's funny that a Senator calls the rest of us "ordinary"

Some people are just more equal than other people, I s'pose.

[mattclearing]

5. Yeah.

I left out the name of the Senator to avoid it being possible flamebait. But considering the source, it's really pretty bad.

[Warpy]

8. Coming to terms with the fact that we ARE ordinary

is really part of growing up. Some people can't do it, and those are the ones who cause the most trouble to the rest of us, either through crackpot religion or crime.

However, yes, "working Americans" might sound a bit better to a lot of people.

[Squatch]

10. If we're all "ordinary", then why use the word at all.

It's superfluous and, in this case, demeaning.

[mattclearing]

14. Sounds like a personal problem to me.

"Growing up" and "coming to terms with the fact that we ARE ordinary" sound like phrases fashioned by adults to condescend to the child in all of us.

I have a job, a life, and a family, but I'm never growing up or resigning myself to being ordinary.

[Doctor_J]

9. Remember Delay's words last year

defending taking bribes, he said, "I defy anyone to live on what I make". What he makes is $156,000/yr, plus pension and insurance, plus whatever he sill makes from teh extermination business.

[Squatch]

11. Do you mean to tell me that you don't make $150,000 a year?

How bourgeois.

[TayTay]

2. It doesn't bother me.

I think ordinary is a perfectly valid description of people. I don't have a problem with it or using it to describe people, incluidng family and such. We are ordinary Americans.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. I'm With You

He didn't say he himself was extraordinary, just that Silverspoon's gang is out of touch. The implication, IMO, is that the Bushgang thinks themselves ABOVE THE ORDINARY.
The Professor

[Maraya1969]

3. You are right. Check out the definition.

5 entries found for ordinary.
or·di·nar·y Audio pronunciation of "ordinary" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ôrdn-r)
adj.

1. Commonly encountered; usual. See Synonyms at common.
2.
1. Of no exceptional ability, degree, or quality; average.
2. Of inferior quality; second-rate.
3. Having immediate rather than delegated jurisdiction, as a judge.
4. Mathematics. Designating a differential equation containing no more than one independent variable.

[mattclearing]

6. That makes it sound even worse than what I was thinking.

"Of inferior quality; second-rate"

We'd like to appeal to first-rate voters too, wouldn't we? :D

[BillZBubb]

7. I agree, bad word choice.

Even though on the surface it is a perfectly good adjective in the context of the topic, "ordinary" is not a good word to use when trying to gain customers for your products or services.

"Middle class", "hard working", or even "the non-rich majority of" would be better.

[flordehinojos]

12. would ,"every day Americans", do? i am an every day American.

[mattclearing]

13. That one is better.

If it's good enough for Sly and the Family Stone...

[dusmcj]

15. important to proudly assert: "WE are normal. WE are ordinary"

Rather than the groupmind psychotics who enjoy keeping the Dear Leader's image in their mind's eye throughout the day. Doesn't it strike you that the conservatives have been leading an assault on modern civil normalcy for the last 30 years ? And been attempting to replace it with catharsis, will, faith, and almost physical excitement at the thought of authority ? These people are defectives, or precisely advocates and members of a deficient culture, and the results of their advances demonstrate that abundantly. They are cultural vandals who are doing their best to demolish the modest advances made by this species over the millenia by virtue of the hard work, life work of people whose shit said vandals don't merit eating.

Yes, WE are ordinary normal people, the kind that the Democratic Party has always championed among other things, who believe in an egalitarian society, access to opportunity to all unfettered by social exclusion, the possibility of progress, and above all the superiority of the enlightened individual deliberately choosing to participate in a free society, over the shade world of conformity, ignorance, corruption, profiteering and group coercion the opposition tries to sell.

[Orangepeel]

16. it was probably tested

or at least it should have been (and I hope they did some real market research and not just a couple of lame focus groups).

It isn't a word I'd choose, but I believe I read somewhere that most Americans described themselves as "average" so maybe they describe themselves as "ordinary," too.

:shrug:

[mattclearing]

17. Most Americans described themselves as "average"

Was this the mean of a sliding scale of (1 = below average) to (5 = above average) ? :D

[Orangepeel]

18. the particular survey wasn't taken in Lake Wobegon

I suppose.

I don't remember exactly. I think it was a yes or no response to a question like, "would you describe yourself as an average American." I'm sorry to say it is a vague memory and I don't have a cite.

[mattclearing]

19. Funny question.

Average is somewhat less unnappealing to me than "ordinary." Sort of like the difference between "normal" and "plain."

[Loonman]

20. Well, 17 million people share your birthday

Which also makes astrology bullcrap.

[mattclearing]

21. This kinda misses the point. n/t

[meow2u3]

22. What about "normal Americans"

as opposed to the repuke money elite and power pimps, who work the average workaday American to death and keep the fruits of other people's labor, passing them off as their own?

[rucky]

23. stronger to say "Bush out of touch with most Americans." n/t