SACRAMENTO — It's such a simple word, a modest, wholesome-sounding little thing. "Outreach." As in reach out. As in help.
Picture armies of heroic souls in the trenches, outreaching away. Hospital workers comforting lonely cancer victims. Churches tending the needy. Cops getting kids off drugs.
But in Sacramento these days, the word "outreach" is a tad besmirched, given the juicy role it plays in the unfolding drama starring Chuck Quackenbush.
Quackenbush is the state's elected insurance commissioner, and he's been doing a lot of outreach lately. A foundation he created with insurance industry money used $1.4 million for "outreach" to "underserved" communities. An additional $3 million went for "outreach" accomplished through TV ads featuring the telegenic Mr. Q.
The trouble is that the money was supposed to go to Northridge earthquake victims. And the outreaching had a distinct political benefit for Quackenbush.
"The notion created by the word is that the benefit is for the outreached," says Stanford University linguist John Rickard, who teaches a class on language in society. "When the outreacher is benefiting, well, that makes the usage suspect."
The concept of "outreach," or "community outreach," has an almost unassailable quality to it--one that exudes selflessness and discourages scrutiny.
Scholars, in fact, include "outreach" on their list of "God terms," those things to which everyone pledges allegiance in America: terms like "progress," "patriotism," "Pilgrims," "Abraham Lincoln." So says John Murphy, who teaches political speech at the University of Georgia.
"God terms have great power to anesthetize our critical instincts," Murphy says. "Community outreach is an excellent example."
"Outreach" also has an appealing vagueness about it: It sounds marvelously noble, but you're never quite sure what it means. That, of course, comes in particularly handy in politics.
"It's an interesting word because it can mean practically anything. It's almost deliberately unclear," notes UC Berkeley linguist Robin Lakoff. "In that sense, you can read into it whatever you choose--a very useful thing in politics."
So how did "outreach"--defined literally by most dictionaries as "to go beyond" or "extend out"--morph into the big umbrella term it is today? Briefly put, word meanings often evolve to suit a given time or circumstance. Language is elastic, or, depending on your viewpoint, easily corrupted.
