Impromptus today is the usual mélange, ranging from Russia and our Right to Oprah and Liberace. (Really.) I’d like to excerpt one item, then make a comment, which may amuse you (or not?):
There are perfectly good words — even honorable and noble words — that can make your skin crawl in certain contexts. I am beginning to feel that way about “people.”
“We the People!” people like to say. Often, I find, they don’t mean you and me — they mean themselves and their friends. Period. In France, Madame Le Pen’s slogan is “In the name of the people.” Uh-huh. Then there are “people’s republics” — etc.
When politicians, especially of a dogmatic or demagogic type, brandish the word “people,” beware.
Once upon a time in Washington, D.C., there was a chain called “Peoples Drugs.” They were all over the place. Later, they became CVSes.
Someone once said to me, “When I first got here, I saw all those ‘Peoples Drugs,’ and I thought, ‘What is this, Sandinista Nicaragua? Madison, Wisconsin?’ It seemed kind of commie.”
I knew what he meant. In Ann Arbor, we had “People’s” this and that as well. (Peoples Drugs, in any case, was a good capitalist enterprise.)