Profanity

It’s Saturday, and I’m feeling lazy. I decided not to go sailing, to instead stay home and play with toes, examine my navel, do those things that usually ultimately make me unhappy. But my throat has a tickle. I’m tired. I’m behind in several projects. So, here I am.

One of those projects, though a lesser one, is listening to my podcasts. I like to know what’s happening in the world. My friends told me that language about removing the troops from Iraq did not make it to the president’s desk – that the Democrats wimped out – but I had no idea what else was happening. I’ve been puttering around my apartment, drinking tea and eating apple crisp from apples left over from our energizer station and catching up. Slate podcasts used profanity more than once in 2 different podcasts. At first I didn’t realize they were both Slate podcasts, but I looked at the screen, and yes indeedy. Why is it suddenly OK to say “fuck”?

I have a theory. On the gabfest, the gabbers make no bones about being avid HBO watchers. Nearly every episode they make some observation about some tv show. I watched Sex and the City and Six Feet Under, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the shows do not shy from using profanity. You’re raised not to use certain words; so, you use them to make sure people listen and understand the gravity of what you say. This mechanism has transcended fictional entertainment and now our intellectual media is using it to make their own emphases.

Words are just words. There’s a certain “c” word that I am particularly fond of, but if we begin using them every day, will the sky fall in like it did on Chicken Little? You can say that we shouldn’t use these words because their origin is of disrespect, of belittling human functions and body parts, even powerful acts of Love. You could also argue that things only become really bad if you ignore them, like STDs, sweep them under the carpet.

My sister said that she doesn’t use profanity around her children because she doesn’t want her children using profanity around people who don’t know that she’s a nice person. There is something really icky about a 2-year old saying “fuck”. Maybe because they don’t know what the word means, and innocence is kind of a nice thing to have while you can.

A little voice in my head says that Slate is casting “fuck” to see how we’ll react to it. I don’t pretend to be a great intellectual or even very politically astute. But what I think is interesting is the way social attitudes can change over time, like with smoking and soon driving, maybe the prohibition on profanity is also fading out. People probably don’t listen to Slate with their kids. Freedom of speech is one of the original rights granted with the formation of our country.

On the other hand, what’s the long-term goal of using profanity? Well, it will ultimately necessitate finding new words to strengthen our language as the old ones become common. Or maybe if all words are acceptable, it will necessitate using words more carefully and skillfully to make and emphasize our points. I’d like that.