Weekly Standard Scrapbook: Lefty site has 60x more profanity than FR

The Weekly Standard ^ | 3/3/2007

[NYS_Eric]

www.pottymouth.com

This may or may not come as a surprise, but there's more profanity on "The Internets" than in traditional media. Lots more. The enterprising blogger Patrick Ishmael (newsbuckit.blogspot.com) did an, excuse the pun, quick and dirty analysis of the ideological divide in online trash-talking. Make that, ideological chasm. He did a Google search for comedian George Carlin's famous "seven dirty words" on popular lefty and righty blogs. Lefty Daily Kos took top honors with 146,000 pages containing one or more of the words in question. Its lefty competitor, The Huffington Post, was close behind with 109,000. No right-wing site reached even 10,000 on the Carlin scale.

A commenter at the site refined the methodology to account for overall site size, finding a "'7 words' to pages" ratio of "1 profanity every 2 pages" for Daily Kos and "1 every 121 pages" for the Free Republic ("the foulest" of the righty sites). The study "isn't scien tific," Ishmael warns, "but hey, it's pretty @*%#$&! close."

[NYS_Eric]

Amusing little read this AM...

[timsbella]

When one is educated with values, they can find better ways to say things. Fools and those without imagination use profanity.

[Reo]

Daily Kos: aka: Daily Cuss

[Republic Rocker]

Holy &^#@ Batman...!

[veronica]

The left is very angry. The right not as much. Except for a small cadre of anti-Rudy types. They are an embarrassment to the rest of us.

[Stepan12]

There's no reason for Freepers/Conservatives to descend into such a gutter as the Lib/Commies! Ann Coulter fights back with brass knuckles, but the much maligned beauty does not use foul language.

One convention that I found useful is the one Hon. Robert Bork used when coming close to writing foul language. He uses the first letter with elipses after it and then has in parenthesis, read without the elipses. It goes something like this from one of Judge Bork's books: F... the army (read without the elipses).

I personally think it's a good and relatively elegant idea for describing foul language without saying it.

[MaryFromMichigan]

I've been reading the Giuliani threads.
Even though passions are at a fever pitch, freepers try to keep it clean.
Gotta be proud of that.

[Abathar]

Geez, we're the foulest of the righty sites? And to think Pookie got a time out for using the A word in a comic.

There must be some REALLY strict Mod's on the other sites....

[missnry]

So... just out of curiosity do top of the keyboard entries register as naughty words?
i.e. OH *@##!!

[cgk]

A commenter at the site refined the methodology to account for overall site size, finding a "'7 words' to pages" ratio of "1 profanity every 2 pages" for Daily Kos and "1 every 121 pages" for the Free Republic ("the foulest" of the righty sites)

The mods are SLACKING! :-P.

Seriously though, the only ONE of Carlin's 7 dirty words I've seen let stand is the "P" one. I've even seen the "T" one removed. So I'm skeptical of the claim.

[conservativeharleyguy]

While I absolutely agree that one should always make one's point as articulately as possible, there are times when a well-coined, emphatic expletive is really the only recourse.


"Indiscriminate use of profanity is the linguistic crutch of an inarticulate Mother****er"!

[xcamel]

There was a great post here on FR that showed the results... now I can't find it...

[stevem]

Something I've noticed in TV and movie efforts in recent years is the utter coarsening if ths culture, sometimes even among movie makers that I like. Still the talkies most worth watching tend to be ones I would not be embarrassed to take my grandkids to see.

My contention is the imagination and talent simply isn't as developed today as it was in days of yore.

The same can be said across the culture. I don't think liberals are really capable of imaginative thought. The talent and the imagination simply doesn't exist in liberals. Since liberals also have no real point to anything there is much vacuum in their communications. Vacuums must be filled with something. Hence...

[KC_Conspirator]

The left is still fuming $#@* angry. And they just won an election for crying out loud.

[saganite]

Looks like I embarras you since I don't think Rudy is the right man for the job.

[nativist]

I think its just that most conservatives want to respect the people on this board who may find bad language offensive. I do not mind foul language but is certainly polite not to use it in company.

[Drango]

Daily Kos can bite me.

[skimask]

Kos and DU are HATE sites filled with kids and burnt out hippies longing for the summer of love.

[wildbill]

Actually, this liberal potty-mouth orientation is another relic from their 60s hey-days.

Don't you remember how they accused bourgois society (ie. mommy and daddy) of oppression and recommended using the f-word in front of old ladies to liberate oneself?

It's a childish rant that they've never given up.

[Enterprise]

Stepan12 is right. Conservatives paid attention in school, thus, they have more words to choose from.