Posted on 05/09/2019 11:19:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
One of my favorite 1960s anecdotes comes from legendary broadcaster Larry King, who tells of attending his first roast at New York City’s Friars Club. There, French actor Maurice Chevalier dared to utter the F-word live on stage. King was practically blown out of his seat. “I thought I’d die,” he recalls.
Today, as King himself has noted, the F-bomb — once known as the ultimate forbidden verbal lightning bolt, the Utterance That Must Not Be Named, or at least the word of last resort to use when you’re really hopelessly mad — might as well be growing out of random cracks in the sidewalk. In 2019, the F-word is a throwaway. It is a sneeze. It is as common as dandelion fluff.
Does anyone else find this awkward? Mock me if you will — no doubt my quest is a lonely one — but I certainly do.
Just the other day, while I was communing with a wildly energetic and occasionally shouty spin instructor in my garage — I am the enthusiastic new owner of one of those Peloton workout bikes where you can beam into classes via an Internet-connected screen — I discovered that even the most winsome and cheerful Peloton instructor might one day randomly bombard you with the F-bomb. In my case, this happened right in the middle of an insanely steep fake “hill” climb and a cheerily judgmental pop song. (If the song had happened to be Ariana Grande’s regrettably catchy hit “Thank U, Next,” or perhaps Pink’s unedited “F-ing Perfect,” I could have absorbed approximately seven bonus F-words for good measure.)
I have since discovered that Peloton classes have labels and filters for explicit language, which is certainly nice of them. I somehow missed this the first go-round, because just as no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, I naïvely failed to expect that my workout bike would one day curse at me like my own personal Colonel Jessup from A Few Good Men.
Thankfully, my kids were out of earshot when that particular F-bomb dropped. Unfortunately, there have been plenty of others to go around. My kids were in exceptionally clear eyeshot on a different day, for instance, when we happened to pass a bored-looking young lady sporting a tank top that declared, “YOU MUST HAVE ME CONFUSED FOR SOMEONE WHO GIVES A [F-WORD].” The word in question was, of course, uncensored, helpfully available for every kindergartener in a 20-foot radius to see.
What is wrong with everyone? Have we lost our national “edit” button? (I’ll answer my own question, because the answer is obvious: Yes.)
The F-bomb has long been with us, but the growing tendency to cheerfully, unhesitatingly use it in any old circumstance is something new and alarming. Forget venturing into R-rated movies or edgy art galleries: Take your kid into a random gift shop in the Texas hill country these days, and you might find cutesy hand towels embroidered with swear words that would have made young Larry King faint. Beto O’Rourke, always game to roll on the bad-idea bandwagon, gained notoriety during his Senate campaign for letting an impressive parade of F-bombs fly. Self-help books with the F-word fly off the shelves, even though — at least in the humble opinion of this writer, who grew up in the famously repressed rolling fields of the American Midwest — “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Rip” would make for just as compelling a title as “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a” — well, I’ll stop there. You know what word is coming next.
It gets worse: Just last week, Burger King, which is gross even without the help of swear words, launched a series of mood-themed “Real Meals,” questionable foodstuffs boxed with wonderfully poetic names like — you guessed it — the DGAF Meal. (DGAF, in case you’re still gloriously unaware, stands for “Don’t Give a [You Know What].”)
Weirdly, Burger King released these meal deals as part of “Mental-Health Awareness” month. That seems paradoxical at best, but since we’re speaking of mental health, let’s take this moment to get philosophical. My crusade against the public explosion of the F-bomb, you see, goes beyond simple manners. Much like, say, The Lego Batman Movie, it is far deeper than it appears.
In many ways, words can shape our very perception of reality. Edward Sapir, who helped develop the hypothesis of linguistic relativity in the 1930s, put it this way: “Human beings . . . are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. . . . The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.”
It’s a radical idea, but what if it contains a grain of truth? What does our society’s thunderstorm of public F-bombs do to our greater sensibility, cultural or otherwise? When the worst swear word becomes commonplace, what do we use to describe the truly horrific? What happened to mystery and subtlety? For that matter, what happened to the fashion sense of people who regularly sport shirts that evoke memories of the early routines of Andrew Dice Clay?
It is no surprise, I suppose, that the F-bomb has become ubiquitous as our culture’s exhibitionism has gotten out of control. But here we can draw at least one consolation: Back at the Friars Club in the Sixties, the F-word was shocking and rare, at least when uttered in public. Today, it’s emblazoned in insouciant acronyms on the packaging of mass-produced Burger King meals.
Behold, America: The F-bomb has officially entered the realm of the hopelessly banal. Who knows? Perhaps if we’re lucky, Americans will get bored with using it — and that might just save us all.
Tell that to my fellow Marines. It’s a part of our everyday language in the Corps. I learned to turn it off once I retired, but get me around a bunch of my old friends it comes back again.
Furking
Fudge
Freak
Frack
Frick
The euphemisms are what make forbidden words more interesting.
My favorite is the edited-for-TV version of the movie Fargo.
Whenever one of the characters says “f***ing” in the original they substitute “frozen”.
“No frozen way!” It actually works better!
Tell that to my fellow Marines. It’s a part of our everyday language in the Corps. I learned to turn it off once I retired, but get me around a bunch of my old friends it comes back again.
I am an old submarine guy but tend to agree with the author.
A woman I know (ex military) loves to express disbelief by saying "Shut the Front Door!"
Not to date myself, but I have certainly noticed a coarsening of language in general over the last ten years or so. Especially with young women, who seem to be even more profane in order to establish bona fides or something. And people wearing tees wiht the F-word emblazoned... I have no explanation. Going for shock value?!
The C-word is permissable too.
That was a great series!
It's about time the "f..." word stop being a way to offend people. It's use tells me something about the person. They can say "f..." if I can call a thug a thug.
I heard a young girl let loose the MFSOB in the dairy aisle. She yelled at her younger brother. Mother did not flinch or correct the foul mouthed child.
I heard a young girl let loose the MFSOB in the dairy aisle. She yelled at her younger brother. Mother did not flinch or correct the foul mouthed child.
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lolol. I guess the irony of her own daughter calling her a b-word was lost on her.
“My mother never saw the irony of calling me a son of a bitch.” ~~ Jack Nicholson
I don’t like it at all......but on the other hand what difference does it really make??? There are religious words in vain that bother me much more....The slang word for sexual intercourse, while crude, is often used and abused....so what?
Well Frack that!
If I ever hear it in my social circle that person get a dressing down from me.
I'm old so I don't care if they get offended or not.
I never understood that either....I worked for many years in a juvenile max security penal institution and they called each other that CONSTANTLY
The excrement word works in the same fashion.
I don’t give a S*#&. (object)
I s*#& you not. or I’m not S*#&ing you (V)
That’s some S#&@# crazy stuff there (adj)
The S&#^ I just took(noun)
That little S&#^ (possible pronoun usage)
Holy S#^@#! (exclamation)
Well that was just S#^@ly stupid of you (adverb)
Other words related to human genitalia are likewise capable of multi-usage, however only the F word can deliver F#&@ity F#^@ing F#^&!
I find profanity fascinating - especially when considering the term ‘bloody’ is considered offensive among the Brits.
I do agree though that all the “dirty” words are not in the realm of group identification and no longer associated with the traditional terms for bodily functions/parts and fornication.
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