Reach Out in the Darkness

Last night my guitar teacher emailed me to cancel today's lesson.  He said he'd been meaning to "reach out to me" regarding this cancellation. 

For some reason I felt like a snitch in NYPD Blue.   And he was David Caruso.  And he was reaching out to me.  Lieutenant: Reach out to your snitches.  David Caruso: I’ll reach out to my snitches.  And away you go.

Now my teacher wasn’t reaching out to tell me he’d decided I didn’t have enough talent for him to waste his time on.  He wasn’t reaching out to tell me the guitar I’d left at his studio had been trampled by a herd of bison and that he’d had to use it for firewood.  He was just “reaching out” to tell me he had to cancel.

Yeah, yeah, language changes, like every other damn thing.  Believe me, I know.  And I know (like Hesiod knew) that words know how to deceive.  I'm even willing to entertain the notion that ALL language is deception.  I’ve had the notion myself.

But sometimes an utterance just goes too far.  Too far in the direction of what you might call shameless and artless crapola.  It's like listening to George Bush when he talked about ... well, about anything.  Not only was he lying, but he was lying so egregiously and so transparently that you couldn't help feeling he didn't care if you knew he was lying or not.

That's what new words and phrases do sometimes.  Case in point: "concern."  At some point, we didn't want to admit we were worried or pissed off or really hated something.  It was, perhaps, too raw an emotional statement.  So when we really hate what someone has said or done, we tell them it “concerns” us.  Reminds me of Philip Seymour Hoffman in "The Big Lebowski": "This is our concern, Dude ..."  It feels safer, softer.  It feels ... inoffensive.

Anyway, back to "reach out."  Why do we need this?  What does this do for us that phone, email, contact, write don't do for us?

Obviously, it adds two things.  First, it adds the veneer of philanthropy.  Reaching out is a good, noble and compassionate thing to do.  It may even be affectionate.  We learned this from Cliff Robertson in the AT&T ads: Reach out and touch someone.  To reach out is clearly nicer than not to reach out.  No one ever screams at his wife over his morning toaster waffle, "Okay, okay!  I'll reach out to the asshole!" and throws the phone book across the room where it hits the wall and drops not 18 inches from Baby Ferdinand in his crib.  No, if you reach out, you are serene, you are Mother Teresa, you betray no inner turmoil.  When people are “concerned,” by the way, they “reach out.”  Get with the program, will ya?

Second, to reach out is to make an effort.  A significant effort.  It's no big deal to make a phone call, but if you “reach out” to someone, you are marshaling the Seven Armies of the Twelve Kingdoms in order to do this.  It suggests that you may, like David Caruso, have to call in all sorts of secret favors, meet in dark, moist alleyways, cast your net far and wide before this person responds to your reaching out.  And when he does, you don’t necessarily get right to the point.  Maybe you buy your snitch a cup of coffee and a cherry pie in a greasy diner; maybe you talk about the weather or the Mets or his methadone jones before you start in with 20 questions.  Get him comfortable first.  Get him receptive. That’s reaching out.

Suddenly, then, if we reach out, we are two things: we are a very, very nice person and an astoundingly hard worker.   And where are these qualities both highly esteemed?  In the corporation, of course.  Corporations like it when you seem to be working really hard.  And they like people who keep their emotions to themselves and present a pleasant, placid and infinitely competent face to the world.  This is the kind of person who "reaches out," when others might phone, write, or even shout out loud like Huey Long.

And so, my friends, this is why we say it.  And this is why I despise it.  Because some linguistic change, if you don't despise it, you're just a tool.