No mincing words - swearing is a big deal

Arizona Daily Star ^ | 01/01/04 | Jay Ambrose

[Holly_P]

Now that John Kerry has uttered the f-word in a Rolling Stone interview, and the Federal Communications Commission has said just about any language can pass muster on broadcast TV and radio, the with-it crowd is instructing the rest of us to calm down and go with the flow.

Why, everyone curses like a drunken sailor these days, according to sociology-adoring newspaper articles I've read.

And anyone who makes a fuss about it, some of these articles informed me, just doesn't get it that conventions of the anti-obscenity sort have no inherent value anyway. Why, who gives a bleep if someone says bleep?

A couple of points, to start out with:

* Maybe I live in a different America from some pundits and the professors quoted in the newspaper articles, but I seldom hear people talking like that. Sure, there is the cursing of the rebellious young, who should find it in their hearts to forgive themselves as they age.

And then there are those reared in the school of hard knocks who overdo it. There's some excuse there.

Far less excusable are the Hollywood cuss-freaks - often undereducated comedians - who mistake their juvenile impulses for sophistication and even moral superiority. But most people I know watch what they say.

* I am not the first to suggest there are appropriate and inappropriate places for all kinds of human activities. Few of us think showering in the nude objectionable, unless maybe you do it in your front yard.

By the same token, soldiers muttering profanities on a battlefield in the middle of a war is a far cry from offering a toast profuse with four-letter words at a formal dinner at which many of the guests will clearly be offended. The latter is a step beyond rude. It could be akin to spitting on the food.

When Irish rock singer Bono used the f-word on a live TV broadcast last January, he would had to have been a complete idiot to have thought he wasn't upsetting any of the show's many viewers.

Oh, he may have made some of them giggle, too, but people of some maturity were surely watching, people who are shocked by this kind of talk. Did it make him feel good to make them feel bad?

Kerry, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and a presidential candidate, is not in quite the same category. An interview with a rock 'n' roll magazine is not the equivalent of a TV appearance - and yet you wonder what he was up to.

Surely he does not use the word so commonly as to have slipped it into the discussion inadvertently, a consequence of habit nullifying alertness.

You find yourself supposing (as others have suggested) that he was trying to show himself at one with the magazine's readership.

"Oh, big deal!" says a letter writer to a San Francisco newspaper about Kerry's use of the word. The writer then goes on to say the real obscenities are President Bush's policies.

This provides us with a common example of illogic; it scarcely excuses one offense to insist that another offense was far worse.

The letter writer might have contemplated that words are very precious in the human experience and their use as acts of oral violence entails the risk of extra-oral harmfulness.

Most of us know as much on a certain level, even if in thoughtless moments we protest that a word is a word is a word. If it is, why would so few of us ever utter a racial epithet?

We don't do it because we recognize that these epithets imply hateful attitudes meant to dehumanize.

In a way that is not the same but similar, the f-word connotes a debased view of sex as one person roughly, unaffectionately using another. The word usually implies anger and hostile intent.

The FCC has decided the f-word is OK on broadcast TV if it is used in an adjectival, nonsexual context. While I do not advocate censorship, I would note that the use of the word in that fashion scarcely erases the ugly connotations from our minds.

Because ours is an age in which all warnings of decadence-propelling conduct is thought to be answered by the word "hypocrisy," I hereby confess that my language is not always pure. It doesn't follow that the letter writer was right. The public use of obscenities is a big deal.

* Jay Ambrose is director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard Newspapers, 1090 Vermont Ave. NW, Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20005; e-mail: ambroseJ@shns.com.

[Newbomb Turk]

I will tell you what works for me. I tell my kids that everytime they catch me swearing or not wearing my seatbelt in the car I will give them a dollor.

This helped clean up my act real fast.

Although it's sometimes hard not to revert when on military duty.

[reagan_fanatic]

Did you know John F-ing Kerry is a Vietnam vet?

[shiva]

Are you series?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Not that which goeth into the mouth defiles a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defiles a man.
Matthew 15:11

Peter said unto him, Declare unto us this parable.
Jesus said..
Do ye not understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?
But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile a man.
For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adultries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
These are the things that defile a man:
Matthew 15:15-20

[Lazamataz]

Not that which goeth into the mouth defiles a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defiles a man. Matthew 15:11

Homosexuality disproves the predicate premise of this sentence.

[Caipirabob]

Did you know John F-ing Kerry is a Vietnam vet?

Oh yeah? So on who's side?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

My only dread in posting that post was someone would take it out of context as you did.

[Lazamataz]

I live to keep you in dread.

[Elliott Jackalope]

Laz is a pro at that kind of stuff. His brain is wired into a configuration that results in his being a perpetual smarta$$. It's not his fault, he can't help it. He means well.

[TaxMe]

Is it my imagination or are mostly women cussing these days. Along with tatoos, women seem to be the biggest offenders.

[shiva]

Huh?

[gcruse]

It happened some time in the early seventies. When I moved from the US, guys didn't curse around women, and kids didn't curse at all.

When I moved back to the US in 1977, it was a shock. Forget the guys cursing. Women were outswearing men right out loud and worse than I had ever heard guys talk in mixed company.

To this day, I don't swear around women. But nothing coming out of their mouths surprises me any more.

Civilization didn't collapse and the crime rate didn't shoot up. It's not that big a deal. It's just a little more coarsening of society. Conservatives lament this more than liberals.

However, conservatives cannot see that by criminalizing victimless offenses, they are rendering huge swathes of the population into petty criminals, coarsening society themselves.

[LibKill]

If one uses profanity constantly, it loses its shock value. When the time comes that you need it, you have already 'shot your bolt'.

Or so said the NCO manual.

I was guilty of excessive profanity when younger, but nowadays I watch what a say a durn sight more closely.

[dwilli]

How simple are the folks who take the time to type out profanity on internet forums? Do they think it adds emphasis or value to their statement?

[LibKill]

How simple are the folks who take the time to type out profanity on internet forums? Do they think it adds emphasis or value to their statement?

Nah, they just have small minds and smaller vocabularies.

[Ruth A.]

Its your imagination. Though I will admit that proportionately, many more women sware nowadays than they used to. I let teenagers know that I do not expect to hear that in public.

[speekinout]

Cursing is just one of the gifts of feminism. It's another way where women can be "one of the guys". And children take cues from their mothers.

[gcruse]

. I let teenagers know that I do not expect to hear that in public.

I came into the break room at work once, and one of the young women employees was waxing obscene to a table full of cohorts.  I walked around a bit until she finished.  Then I said, "It's hard to believe such a pretty mouth can put out such filth."  She looked at me with slack-jawed astonishment and I strolled back out of the break room.  Doubt if it did a bit of good, but it sure felt nice.

[gcruse]

My momma never taught me how to curse. The neighborhood kids took care of that, themselves.