"Smug, greedy, well fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. Israeli murderers are called commandos. Arab commandos are called terrorists...In the age when torture as become 'enhanced interrogation techniques,' when the rich are 'job creators,' when murdered children are called 'collateral damage.'"
--George Carlin
"Now your Northern nigger's a Negro
You see, he's got his dignity
But down here we're too ignorant to realize
The north as set the nigger free.
Yes, he's free to be put in a cage in Harlem in New York City
--Randy Newman, "Rednecks"
One thing which triggers Mad Dog is euphemism.
As George Carlin noted, this "softening" of language allows us to live with the reality of murdered children, ethnic cleansing or racial hatred by calling it something less offensive.
We are such delicate hot house flowers, our society would just disintegrate if the newscaster reporter that some Congressman called someone a "Nigger," or that some Senator called a colleague a "dumb fuck."
There was a famous Supreme Court case where the defendant, appealing his conviction to the Supreme Court, had written the words, "Fuck the Draft" on his jacket and he was arrested for Disturbing the Peace.
His attorney chose to use the word, "Fuck" in oral arguments before the Court, believing that by saying that word out loud in the hallowed halls of the Supreme Court of the United States, and demonstrating the walls of the Supreme Court building did not immediately collapse, he might win his case.
That case was Cohen v California, 1971, and the Court (which is so different a Court from today's Star Chamber) ruled that "fuck" was not enough to justify a conviction.
Writing for the Court (in a 5-4 decision) Justice John Harlan noted the violation of local norms was clearly a matter of pure speech--the words had been written on a jacket, but the man wearing it had not behaved in any way other than wearing that jacket to disturb the peace or to endanger or threaten anyone.
Harlan went on to say that "one man's vulgarity is another's lyric"
The four justices who disagreed--the opinion written by Harry Blackmun-- said wearing that jacket was not speech, but was "an absurd and immature antic." They would have preferred, "F-word, The Draft."
(Intriguingly, this uptight justice, Harry Blackmun wrote the majority opinion allowing for abortion in Roe v Wade.)
Of course, Donald Trump uses the word "fuck" frequently and publicly--even right here in New Hampshire at one of his rallies--before crowds, and nobody seems to mind.
So maybe it's not the word per se, but who is using it and under what circumstances. If Mad Dog uses the word in his living room or in a meeting of the Hampton Democrats, he's got to say, "Mr. Trump called a reporter a dumb F-word."
But, would the New York Times report that an ICE agent in Minneapolis called someone he arrested "a nigger"?
No, the NYT would said he "used the N-word."
And what is the benefit of saying "the N-word" or "the F-word," other than virtue signaling?
Oh, HE said that, not me. I wouldn't even besmirch my virtue by repeating what he said, I'm so prim and proper.
We are told using these words "coarsens" our public discourse, sullies our culture and grows hair on our palms.
Imagine American culture tolerating words like "fuck"!
HOOTERS MIDDLE SCHOOL BASEBALL TEAM
Mad Dog thinks we are long past all that, with the advent of Mr. Trump and those who sail with him.
And, Mad Dog asks quite unironically: How could we possibly "coarsen" public discourse or American culture any more than it already has been coarsened in an America where a middle school baseball team goes out after the game to Hooters, where the pre pubescent players can oogle the waitresses?
The fact is, most people, like Mr. Trump who use "fuck" use it because they have limited working vocabulary, and they use this word as a sort of verbal exclamation point; for many it is a verbal tick, a sort of easy rhetorical finger in the eye to say, "I'm really angry" about this or that or someone or something.
They use these words because they have no better words.
For some, it is a way of saying, "There, I've said it. You want a piece of me? Let's step outside and settle this like men."
But, of course, these guys are not actually real men. They are children who have acquired years, but their brains have been arrested in development, mired forever in the dumpster of stunted display and degenerate neurons.
Let Us not Coarsen Our Public Square
There is a wonderful scene in the movie "Roxanne" where Steve Martin playing Cyrano, accosts a man who has attempted to insult his unwieldy nose by spewing out 20 superior insults about his huge nose the man, had he any real imagination or intellect, might have used--the naughty, "some of the lady's have asked if you wouldn't mind putting that thing away," to meteorological, "Watch out, she's going to blow!" And, of course, what he is saying is "you are so low grade you can't even come up with a good insult."
Can We Tolerate Coarse Language?
Mad Dog would like to see a little less dodging and euphemism, and more imagination and intellect.
