Less Ordinary

I am irritated by (mostly) politicians and (also) media-types referring to "ordinary people". I don't mind being a regular, normal, ordinary chap, but when they wield it, the phrase comes with the patronising implication that they are somehow better than ordinary. And as we have seen for a long time and especially in recent years, many politicians in particular and journalists in general tend to range from 'ordinary' downwards. I log occurrences here and send offenders a postcard.

Monday, 9 March 2015

#8 David Graeber

Mr Graeber is described in Wikipedia as "an American anthropologist, author, anarchist and activist, who is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics". He is currently presenting a series of talks on BBC Radio 4 entitled Promises, Promises: A History of Debt.
In episode 6 of 10, The Medieval Period, The Phrase was deployed.
Image from Wikipedia.

3 comments:

Anonymous9 March 2015 at 23:05
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Anonymous9 March 2015 at 23:09
What a strange obsession. I work as a carer on the minimum wage - I've used this phrase many times. When you live in a class society such as ours there is a need to make a distinction from the lives of the great mass of people and the ruling class. There may be *some* cases when a phrase is deployed in a patronising way but certainly this example is not one of them. I feel that your wasting your life here - precious heartbeats and I expend some of mine in pleading with you not to dedicate anymore time to this drivel.
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NickB13 March 2015 at 08:22
Have a good day and try to lighten up.
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