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The message, floated by a friend and fellow columnist on an Internet bulletin board for journalists, made an interesting point.
Enough with the soccer moms and NASCAR dads stuff, he says. Why don't we call these voters what they really are: middle-class white women and working-class white men?
Might as well ask why George Bush didn't admit last year that the same intelligence analysts who fumbled tracking a pre-9/11 al-Qaida couldn't nail down weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Or why the media are just now admitting that continued replays of Howard Dean's most embarrassing moment on the stump (occasionally set to a dance club beat, no less) had something to do with killing his candidacy.
For some folks, the truth never gets in the way of a good story.
Fact is, we in the media often rely on catchy, distracting code words to describe social trends and trendsetters: Gen Xers. Metrosexuals. Yuppies. Buppies. And beyond.
Indeed, the effort to find a one-size-fits-all phrase for a wide swath of the American demographic is modern media's uniquely quixotic quest. Nobody really fits into such neat demographic lines, but we all love reading (and yes, I'll admit, writing) about them anyway.
When an attitude-laden pundit sounds off about soccer moms, don't we all know that's a euphemism for white, middle-class, minivan-driving mothers?
The recent New York Times story about NASCAR dads makes plain who he is, calling him "the white, heterosexual embodiment of the swing voter in the next election. . . . A blue-collar wage earner disaffected from politics and parties and willing to throw a vote to the candidate who speaks to his needs."
There are other such euphemisms: urban (which means black); mainstream (which means white); underprivileged (which mean poor).
Normally used to substitute an innocuous phrase for an offensive one, these euphemisms sidestep uncomfortable issues of race and class that the user wishes to invoke without really tackling them. And yes, if you search the newspaper's archives a while, you'll surely find times when I've used them, as well.
But what so often irks me about the soccer mom/NASCAR dad stories is the casual use of such culturally specific code words. Rather than refer to white, working-class fathers or middle-class white women, we get an avalanche of mushy verbiage that avoids an important demographic point about both groups.
I hear the protests already: Why make race part of the description?
My answer: These demographic groups, particularly the NASCAR contingent, spring from white culture. And those who invoke the terms usually are thinking about white culture and white people.
But that isn't talked about, considered or even noticed among journalists and the general public. It's only noticed by those of us who are left out.
I call it the power of being generic: when your culture is so pervasive that it's considered ground zero. (Just try engaging young white males about how every other show on TV is geared to their tastes. To them, such naked pandering is simply the shape of the world today, not evidence of an unfair preference.)
Political and culture stories that fling around terms such as soccer mom and NASCAR dad, just before talking about the "black vote" or the "Hispanic vote," grant the power of being generic to white culture big time.
Almost simultaneously, as my esteemed colleague Bill Maxwell pointed out a few Sundays ago, they seem to divide voting discussions into consideration of Americans and real Americans.
Keith Woods, an instructor on covering diversity and ethics issues at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies (which owns the St. Petersburg Times) tells journalists to avoid such euphemisms in general.
"They don't really tell you anything," said Woods, who argues that political demagoguery has even turned terms such as "liberal" and "conservative" into cardboard-thin code language. "They rely on a national consciousness about what they mean. When you say NASCAR dads, some people hear a guy who likes to drink a lot and watch race cars. But some people hear racist."
And, considering that most of us strive for accuracy, the fog that comes with slinging around too many catch phrases can't be any good.
So let's all resolve to stop with the cheeky code words - except for metrosexual, which I'm still enjoying tremendously - and try to be more honest about who and what we're talking about. The shape of modern-day political debate, to say nothing of political reporting, is bound to improve.