Can We All Stop Using the Kool-Aid Metaphor Now?
2009 November 20
Seriously.
Using the phrase “Drank the Kool-Aid” is facile, dismissive, and utterly offensive.
I am a SF Bay Area denizen old enough to remember the day of the Jonestown Massacre, November 18, 1978, and the horrors that subsequently came to light.
Nine hundred nine people died in the equatorial heat on that day in Guyana. Two hundred eighty-seven of were them children—murdered, many of them by their parents, who were forced to feed them cyanide-laced Kool-Aid (actually Flavor-Aid) and watch as they died in agony.
Whatever our disagreements, none of us deserves to be likened to the perpetrators of that massacre; nor do the murdered children of Jonestown deserve to be used as a cheap metaphor to be hurled at opponents in a debate.
Kim & Kathleen:
It’s been bugging me for a while, and I’ve seen it used by folks I agree with as well as “the loyal opposition.” I feel kind of the same way about the phrase “going postal.”
I think there should be an unwritten rule that holds that, until all the people who were directly affected by an event are dead, it’s off-limits as metaphor.
Yes, thank you. I too have seen that phrase way too often in certain places lately. I just consider the source..
Thank you! I’ve been saying that for months now. I, too, remember that event. Even as I recognize that the phrase has entered the popular vernacular and that many may not realize what event it refers back to, its connotation is clear. There are clearer, less offensive ways to make clear that you believe someone to be utterly gullible.
KWombles