“The specific use of folks as an exclusionary and inclusionary signal, designed to make the speaker sound like one of the boys or girls, is symptomatic of a debasement of public speech inseparable from a more general erosion of American cultural standards. Casual, colloquial language also conveys an implicit denial of the seriousness of whatever issue is being debated: talking about folks going off to war is the equivalent of describing rape victims as girls (unless the victims are, in fact, little girls and not grown women). Look up any important presidential speech in the history of the United States before 1980, and you will find not one patronizing appeal to folks. Imagine: 'We here highly resolve that these folks shall not have died in vain; and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.”
“Some folks is meant to make excuses. Some folks is meant to make history.”
“Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of.”
“Have you ever listened to folk music? Let's face it, a lot of folk music is all about dead sailors, mad witches, rape and fratricide.”
“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
“Shall we mourn here deedless forever a shadow-folk mist-haunting dropping vain tears in the thankless sea”