What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
When last I was in America, I noticed this, and maybe I'm the last to notice it, and I'm not sure when it happened, but "reach out" seems to have entered the popular lexicon as a synonym for "call" or "contact," as in, "The kitchen is full of cockroaches, we'd better reach out to the exterminator."
Why, I wondered? What's up with this metaphor? I noticed that it annoys me. I've heard it a few more times recently and now it really annoys me. Trying to put my finger on why, I Googled it. This is what comes up first:
ReachOut! is a mentoring charity working with children in deprived areas to raise aspirations and help them grow in character and competence.
Reach Out is a web-based service that inspires young people to help themselves through tough times, and find ways to improve their own mental health and well-being.
"Reachout" is a registered Trust. This non-religious and non-profit social service organization aims to uplift the society. We wish to help families and their children trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty, living in inhuman conditions, deprived of the most basic means of sustenance.
Yes, that's it. "Reaching out" is about making a generous gesture to connect emotionally and help, particularly to the deprived and victimized. When I call you to see if you and I can do business, I'm not trying to heal the hurt, repair our damaged relationship, or envelop you in the universal love of the Gaia Spirit that resides within us all. I'm calling to ask if it can be done by 11:00 a.m. and if I can get a discount if I buy in bulk. Why should I make a phony emotional ceremony of it?
I'm all for love and compassion, but unless you're a deprived child trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty or my estranged ex-boyfriend, you don't need me to reach out. A phone call will do just fine.
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Oct '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
That's funny. I always hear "reach out" as mob lingo, as in "make someone an offer they can't refuse." If you watch back episodes of "NYPD Blue," for example, you'll hear it used that way. It's irrevocably tied to strong-arming and corruption in my mind.
Similarly, it strikes me weird when people talk about "hooking up" with people that doesn't involve, y'know, "hooking up."
May '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
One of the realities of living overseas for prolonged periods is that the accepted PC vernacular of the day becomes increasingly difficult to understand and accept. Having been raised by a loving, gramatic tyrant, the every day language thing that grates most with me is the universal acceptance of ending a sentence with the preposition "at."
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
Is this even PC vernacular? I don't quite understand how it's being used or by whom. I just see it as a sign of the general wussification of our culture.
May '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
Blame AT&T and their ad agency, N.W. Ayer. This tag line was created in 1979 to soften the corporate giant's image.
Which reminds me of a quick story about Peggy Noonan and the most famous speech she ever wrote for the Gipper. People magazine picks up the story:
When the crew of the Challenger space shuttle died in a fiery blast, she wrote, for Reagan: "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them—this morning, as they prepared for their journey, and waved goodbye, and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth [to] touch the face of God.' "—quoting the poem High Flight. A National Security Council staffer, Noonan reports, tried to change the ending to "reach out and touch someone."
Sep '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
Whenever I hear it, I think of the Four Tops classic:
http://www.mp3lyrics.org/f/four-tops/reach-out-ill-be-there/
Dec '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
EJHill is absolutely correct. Soon after the AT&T ads debuted, people started using "reach out and touch someone" in various ironic ways -- shows about the Mob had bosses telling hitmen to "reach out and touch" targets, people angry with customer service telephone reps would threaten to "reach out and touch" them, and people in general would substitute "call" with "reach out and touch." It's fascinating how an ad tagline can enter the language so rapidly and with such staying power.
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
Ha ha. It totally creeps me out, too. Truthfully, not many people are trying to "reach out" to me (thank goodness), but it sounds so phony when I do hear it.
Oct '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
I acutally heard it more a couple of years ago than I do now. It is annoying, it's one of those phrases that, the first few times I hear it, puts me into a coma for about two seconds while my mind tries to interpret it. Same thing happened the first time I heard someone say they needed a 'bio-break'.
Sep '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
my estranged ex-boyfriend
Ouch. Why don't you just pull a whisker out of my face next time?!
Reach out and touch someone sounds like something that will get you incarcerated unless you work for the TSA. I should note, for Claire's benefit, that the last word to cause this kind of annoyance (and its still doing it) is "community" which the enterprising 80 year old Oratorian priest and former head of McGill University's philosophy department, Fr Jonathan Robinson, traced ultimately to Hegel in his book The Mass and Modernity.
(And to think I gave up one of my nine lives for this gig)
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
Pseudodionysius: my estranged ex-boyfriend
Ouch. Why don't you just pull a whisker out of my face next time?!
Reach out and touch someone sounds like something that will get you incarcerated unless you work for the TSA. I should note, for Claire's benefit, that the last word to cause this kind of annoyance (and its still doing it) is "community" which the enterprising 80 year old Oratorian priest and former head of McGill University's philosophy department, Fr Jonathan Robinson, traced ultimately to Hegel in his book The Mass and Modernity.
(And to think I gave up one of my nine lives for this gig) · Jan 25 at 7:03am
Wow, weirdly, the post was originally going to note my equal annoyance with the word "community." Then I got too lazy to make the case against it.
Sep '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Pseudodionysius: my estranged ex-boyfriend
Ouch. Why don't you just pull a whisker out of my face next time?!
Reach out and touch someone sounds like something that will get you incarcerated unless you work for the TSA. I should note, for Claire's benefit, that the last word to cause this kind of annoyance (and its still doing it) is "community" which the enterprising 80 year old Oratorian priest and former head of McGill University's philosophy department, Fr Jonathan Robinson, traced ultimately to Hegel in his book The Mass and Modernity.
(And to think I gave up one of my nine lives for this gig) · Jan 25 at 7:03am
Wow, weirdly, the post was originally going to note my equal annoyance with the word "community." Then I got too lazy to make the case against it. · Jan 25 at 7:18am
Katiev told me I'm supposed to cut it out with the Vulcan Mind Melding as she's getting creeped out by it.
As Letterman's best ever rejoinder to Martha Stewart:
"You never used to say that when we were married!"
Nov '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
“Reach out” are the first two words of a sentence. The whole sentence is, “Reach out to Democrats.” Sometimes it is “Reach across the isle.” It’s what RINOs do. It is a political trick invented by Senator John McCain. It is used to get friendly media attention for Republicans who specialize in double crossing their colleagues. Democrats, being more politically astute, immediately saw it as an ideal way to shame other Republicans, convince them they must be “bi-partisan,” cow them into giving up their principles and going along with Democrat proposals.
Sometimes Democrats "reach out” to Republicans, much the way Lucy would reach out to Charlie Brown by holding the football for him. The latest example of Democrats reaching out to Republicans will be at tonight’s State of the Union Show where Democrats have invited Republicans to sit with them, and in their best Charlie Brown style many Republicans appear to have fallen for it.
Edited on Jan 25, 2011 at 8:11amRe: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
Both "reach out" and "community" are very churchy-speak words. And I'm fine with them in the church context because reaching out to the poor and sick and homeless in the community is what churches do. But "reaching out" to my plumber? No thank you.
Aug '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
if u cnt txt ./ twt it,thn u cnt rch out cn u?
lol 4 cmunty ?
Aug '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
The use of "reach out" in the circumstances cited by Claire are more examples of the increasingly sloppy use of the English language. I cringe when someone wants to "up" rather than "increase" or "party" rather than "attend a party." Transmogrifying nouns into verbs seems to be the most common offense. With reach, though, it is simply faux emotional connectivity.
Aug '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
Celebrating a First Annual XYZ when it is the only time the event has been held is another example. As is using "last" when the word "latest" is the desired word (heh, heh, Pseudo). I am confident "community" will not be the last word to be so misused.
Jan '11
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
I thought it came from the Political Community - "Reach out and put the touch on someone!"
Jul '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
Reach out is used in the business world for contact, in a way that allows for but does not require a certain amount of ambiguity. So I might call Tony at Apple, or reach out to Apple for resources. The implication being that there may be a lot more to it than a phone call.
Sep '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
The verbing of nouns (misuse intended) began to take hold, I think, in the 1970's with "deplane." Now, it is freely and without shame done all the time. One example: "Plating," to describe TV chefs putting food on a plate. One wonders if they "carred" to work, or maybe they "bussed" to work.
Jul '10
Re: What's With This "Reach Out" Business?
I think you will find it in advertising jargon going back at least to the 50's. That constant search for a phrase that captures the attention leads naturally to odd, and often annoying, neologisms.