'Councilor' Leslie Knope

 

I’m a fan of the primetime comedy “Parks and Recreation.” It’s funny, endearing, smart and, as a bonus, features beauty shots of City Hall in my hometown, Pasadena, California.

The show centers around the life of Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), who in the beginning of the series was a city staffer in the parks department but who eventually gets elected to the city council. From there out, she becomes what they call a “councilor.” Not a councilmember, not a councilwoman. A councilor.

I like it.

Moons ago, I worked as a city hall reporter for a small community paper and as editor of another small community paper. In both towns, the elected local representatives called themselves “councilmembers.” If I remember right, this was also what they were called in official records and documents. But it made no difference to us. Our style was to use “councilman” or “councilwoman.”

This kind of gender specificity seems archaic, akin to terms like “lady doctor.” But after the thousand times I had to change “councilmember” to “councilwoman,” I was pretty much indoctrinated.

I don’t cover city government anymore, but I do edit stories about organizations that designate people to speak on their behalf. In their minds, one of these officials is called a “spokesperson.” But a lot like “councilmember,” “spokespersons” don’t exist in my editing universe. You’re either a spokesman or spokeswoman.

The Kool-Aid I drank must have been supersized, because “member” and “person” always sound wrong to me tacked on the end of a word like “council” or “spokes.”

A nice, generic word that sweeps all this bad blood under the rug seems just what the doctor ordered. That’s why I like “councilor.”

Tags:

This entry was posted on Monday, November 11th, 2013 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.