You’d be hard-pressed to find another noun in the English language as amicable, homespun and humble as the word “folks.” It’s anti-intellectual, anti-formal, anti-aristocratic, anti-sophisticated, anti-legalistic, anti-devious, anti-priggish, anti-snooty, anti-ceremonious and anti-antagonistic. It’s also, for lack of a better term, anti-crooked: There’s no shadiness in being folks; folks would never stoop to deceive other folks. (I know what you’re thinking, but true folks wouldn’t try to deceive people who aren’t folks, either.)

Rooted first in the notion of common people (i.e., commoners) with similar mannerisms, speech patterns and attitudes, which then led to the idea of family — blood-related or community-related — the word often reflects a kinship, or at least a loose bond, between the speaker/writer and those being addressed. I say “often” rather than “always” for two reasons: one, because so many words today are blurted out instead of thought out; and two, because we do not live in a guileless world.

While there are millions of genuine folks in this country, I don’t consider myself one of them (not even to my daughters, who prefer the term “parent”). I’m in the media — I get paid to manipulate words and, consciously or not, readers. When Louisville Magazine hired me 18 years ago, then-editor Jim Oppel used to love using “folks” in place of “people.” In a glossy, four-color monthly with a hoity-toity image problem, he felt it lent a little needed down-homeness to our pages. Harmless, but shrewd just the same.

We continue to use it regularly. In fact, the use of “folks” (and Tavis Smiley’s more archaic “folk” on National Public Radio) has become so commonplace in modern media and political oratory that what was once a rhetorical device is now almost second nature to many of us. An unaffected affect has become an unaffected effect.

It is interesting to note, though, that my dictionary’s only usage example for the word “folksy” reads: The politician affected a folksy style.

All that said, things have gotten more than a little out of hand in the bandying about of “folks” in certain powerful segments of our society. To illustrate the point, I ask your indulgence in answering this short quiz:

Which of the following sentences contains an egregious misuse of “folks”?
a) I’m, like, pretty sure I can leave for Panama City in 20 minutes, but I’ll have to check with my folks.
b) They weren’t rich or influential; they were just folks.
c) This is a potential embarrassment, the closeness of the Enron folks to both Cheney and Bush.
d) If those folks get ahold of weapons of mass destruction, we’re talking not about thousands of people (killed), but tens of thousands of people.

Clearly the answer is not c, a quote from public-opinion analyst Karlyn Bowman of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. The usage is appropriate, given the stated closeness between the president and vice president and their Enron “kin.” No, the answer, folks, is obviously d — a quote from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on terrorist “dead-enders.” How on earth can murderous evil-doers possibly be construed as folks?

And it’s not just Rumsfeld. On the tragic morning the two jets hit the World Trade Center towers, President Bush promised “to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act.” After the Baghdad hotel he was staying in was hit by rockets last fall, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said,“It takes a lot of people working together to stop these folks.” (I could accept “a lot of folks working together to stop these people.”) And Cheney chimed in last year with, “A great many of the folks that we’ve captured of those top 55 . . . were turned in as a result of tips from the Iraqis.”

I don’t know — did Roosevelt call the Nazis folks? Did Truman call the Japanese and North Koreans folks? Did LBJ call the Viet Cong folks? From a linguistical and psychological standpoint, why are all these heavyweight hawks characterizing their bitter enemies in such neighborly fashion? Could it be that the plainspokenness they strive for — remember, the Demo-crats are out-of-touch eggheads — has proven too tough to master and has short-circuited their brains (which would explain the childish references to al-Qaeda as “bad guys”)?

I mean, what’s next — catastrophes as “bummers”?