This all reminds me of the time I got a letter published in Newsweek. It was in response to their "In Search of the Radical Middle" issue, which speculated a lot about Colin Powell's political future (this was in the immediate aftermath of Desert Storm). I rather schoolmarmishly called it, not a radical middle, but simply a rogue middle. To be radical, it would have some sort of actual agenda, whereas it seemed to me simply disaffected, loose, at sea -- rogue, like some elephant, or great white shark off Long Island.
Shortly after my letter appeared, I got a LONG -- too long -- message on my answering machine from some guy in Alabama, who said he'd looked in the dictionary and thought I was accusing the "radical middle" of being criminal, and put me to task for it, and then launched into a mini-manifesto cut off by my machine.
Words and phrases often have multiple meanings. Some of us hear "the best and the brightest" and automatically understand the reference to the rather ironic title of David Halberstam's famous book -- others of us, eh, not so much.