Enough of the F*#+ing Language!!!
(Warning: This commentary is not for the puritanical or sensitive. But it is a subject that is being dealt with in the press.)
I must preface this commentary with an admission that I am not a prude when it comes to language. I will use locker room language in casual private conversations – more so today than in years past when I rarely cursed in public or private (and never in front of my parents). Conversely, I never heard my mother use a “bad word” and my dad was limited to an occasional, “God Damn it!” Profanity was not part of my upbringing.
In my youth, the f-word was the shocker. It was only heard among the leather-jacketed, tattooed motorcycle gang members … by boys in the locker room … and Mafia hit men. Those were the days when an f-word uttered in the classroom could have gotten a student expelled.
There are still words absent from my vocabulary even today – even in private. They mostly center on the offensive slangs for women and ethnicity. But a number of words not used by intelligent well-mannered people in the past are now in common use. Words like “damn”, “pissed”, and “bullshit” are routinely heard in news reports and talk shows.
Still … the f-word had remained outside of acceptable usage – especially in more formal oratory – speeches, advertising or on television. That has all changed in recent years. The f-word has become the language de jure among the political class – mostly on the left, but not exclusively.
In responding to a reporter’s question on other nations’ role in producing peace in Ukraine, President Trump said “they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” (Oh! I do not euphemize when quoting.) President Nixon used the f-word a lot in private. The recording transcripts of his White House conversations were riddled with “(expletive deleted)”.
The left began the normalization of profanity in the 1960s with the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Today’s Democrats have made the f-word part of their political mantra. It has become a frenzy of foul language among the radical left elite.
You may recall Mayor Fry tell ICE to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis” at a press conference. He was widely quoted in the news — with “bleeps” and without.
While on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast, California Governor Newsom referred to Joe Rogan as a “motherfucker” for not having him on the popular podcast. In responding to a speech by Trump, a posting on the official Newsom website read “All those words when he could’ve just said, “Fuck your health care and your grocery bills. Get a third job, peasant.” Since no one got reprimanded or fired, we can all agree that Newsom approved of that message.
In addressing the Illinois Federation of Teachers, Illinois Governor Pritzker said, “Donald Trump and his cronies can fuck all the way off.” He also was in the Stratton ad (below) but was not among those dropping the f-bomb. However, his presence was his approval.
Vice President Harris said that the MAGA folks are “out of their fucking minds”. Her crudeness got a roaring approval from the audience. Perhaps it was because – despite the vulgarity – it was one of her clearest verbalizations.
In response to a Trump Speech, Texas Congresswoman and Senate candidate Jasmine Crockett said, “Somebody slap me and wake me the fuck up because I’m ready to get on with it.” When asked what she would like to say to billionaire businessman Elon Musk. Crockett has only two words, “Fuck off!”
“Fuck Trump” has become a rallying call for Democrats. Illinois Democrat Senate Candidate Juliana Stratton actually used the phrase six times in a single 30-second television ad. The profane term is being voiced by different people in the ad, including Illinois Senator Duckworth.
The proliferation of the f-word motivated CNN’s Michael Smerconish to deal with the phenomenon in a segment on his Saturday morning show. His guest was Professor Benjamin Bergen of the University of Southern California, who published a book entitled “What the F ….” – a book devoted to the sociology of foul language. (America is blessed with experts on every subject.)
I was surprised to learn that cursing – or cussing, if you prefer — is good for your health (if not your reputation). According to the professor, cussing has a number of health benefits.
- Releases adrenaline.
- Improves blood flow to the extremities.
- Dilates pupils.
- Increases strength by 5 percent.
- Improves endurance by 15 percent.
Wow! No wonder it feels so good to unleash pejoratives on someone. Bergan likens the effects to what happens in a fight-ot-flight situation. It kicks the emotions into overdrive.
On the negative side, Bergen said there is a direct correlation between cussing and lying. Those who cuss tend to prevaricate more than those who do not. (Hmmm. That may explain the current increase in profanity by politicians.)
Using profanity traditionally reflected poorly on the person using it. It is considered the language of the less intelligent – and those on the losing side of an argument. Even though profanity has gone mainstream, it is still not considered the best use of the English language.
Filling the zone with f-bombs is one thing. The effect is quite another, Bergan says that people are likely to approve if they agree with the person with the potty mouth – and disapprove if they disagree with that person. However, those in the middle tend to think less of the person using profanity.
We do not know who America’s great leader of the past spoke in private. We only know the words of Founders like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin – and others like Lincoln — from their published writings, which were eloquent … poetry. The greatest political speeches and writings were devoid of profanity. On cannot imagine Jefferson putting “Fuck King George” down on parchment.
One can only say two things about today’s descent into — and acceptance of — profanity. It is a real thing – and it is a pity.
So, there ‘tis.
The “f” word came from shortening a phrase used by the puritans religious leaders. The word stood for “fornicating under carnal knowledge “, describing sex outside of marriage. But it became shorter when Ben Franklin got an electrical shock while flying a kite in a thunderstorm. He shortened it to the most common term today.
Funnier than female genitalia, Horist’s entry into PBP’s February funnies is the F-word, the F-bomb and I don’t mean Funny. Like Larry, my father never swore. My mother, not so much so. In my rebellious and intemperate youth, I picked up swearing, I would say like a sailor, but my FIL was a sailor and he did not swear either, unless in Italian and then I wouldn’t know. I have tried to rid myself of this bad habit, but without success. Better, but still a go-to back-up mode.
That said, Larry paints a very funny picture to think about with his: “it was only heard among the leather-jacketed, tattooed motorcycle gang members … by boys in the locker room … and Mafia hit men” painting a picture of Larry hanging with the Hell’s Angels or Al Capone for that matter. His “pugnacious prick” colors would be a pornographic joy to behold, heh, heh.
Because of recent events and an anger of frustration rising to a new high of being unwashed, unheard, unwanted, Democrats have been F-bombing regularly lately to catch up to the main man, and his party, who thinks they are bringing back tough, macho men replete with cussing and such in professional settings. In the who’s on first category, sorry dude, you dropped the first f-bomb and we are just returning fire.
While certainly Dems have been in the f word forefront lately, it’s f-ing funny to see Larry pin the name blame shame on them given his defense of his King’s English as “locker room braggadocio.” Come on, how often have you heard him rationalize foul language with that tired old joke – braggadocio. He’s one funny guy that Larry.
He says “We only know the words of Founders like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin – and others like Lincoln — from their published writings, which were eloquent … poetry.” That one is pure f-ing funny because he obviously did not look for the truth: people swear, they have always swore. Whether in professional and public settings this shit comes and goes with the times. Even Revolutionary times. Washington went postal once. Lincoln loved folksy ribald jokes. Jefferson — yeah, you probably got me there.
But the biggest joke of all is a self-proclaimed free-speech extremist getting all morally prudish and, once again, as is his history, blaming the other guy for starting the fight he picked.
Good job Larry, great humor.
Next, the truth about the f-ing history of f. And I won’t blame anyone. It will be frank, it might even be d a n g e r o u s. But it won’t be the silly dung that Blankenship spewed. Don’t they ever google before they post?
The myth of the f origin story is oft told wrong. The “for use of….” is the repeated myth. The word probably comes from a German or Scandinavian word and meaning push, shove, etc., and is first seen in print in around the 1500 or 1600’s. It was considered vulgar at the time, and not often used. By the mid 1800’s, it gains popularity In America; that’s right, Revolutionaries did not use, but those newer Westerns with the slingers spewing f that and f this are accurate except no one knows the frequency. Around this time the meaning morphed from the vulgar to an expression of other things: surprise, being upset, or take this shove it where the f word does not always mean sex. Fuck you can mean fuck off as in bugger off, as in get off, not a literal fucking. For example, Larry surmises: ‘He says “We only know the words of Founders like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin – and others like Lincoln — from their published writings, which were eloquent … poetry.” Well, not exactly accurate.
Washington’s general order 3: “that the Troops may have an opportunity of attending public worship, as well as take some rest after the great fatigue they have gone through; The General in future excuses them from fatigue duty on Sundays (except at the Ship Yards, or special occasions) until further orders. The General is sorry to be informed that the foolish, and wicked practice, of profane cursing and swearing (a Vice heretofore little known in an American Army) is growing into fashion; he hopes the officers will, by example, as well as influence, endeavour to check it, and that both they, and the men will reflect, that we can have little hopes of the blessing of Heaven on our Arms, if we insult it by our impiety, and folly; added to this, it is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense, and character, detests and despises it.” I have researched Washington for dirt, scandal, etc. and rarely a man since Jesus lives up to this guy. The only slam is perhaps thought of as arrogant, some say shown by his apparel, but this guy was 6ft 2in and, of course, everyone looked up to him, everyone turned when he entered a room, so makes some sense. But he was not Jesus, he was not a saint, and he expressed that sometimes as he also projected the morals and character of his office, whether General or President.
From the battle of Monmouth an account of maybe the only time Washington threw down: “You damned poltroon,” Washington rejoined, “you never tried them!” Always reluctant to resort to profanities, the chaste Washington cursed at Lee “till the leaves shook on the tree,” recalled General Charles Scott. “Charming! Delightful! Never have I enjoyed such swearing before or since.” Lafayette said it was the only time he ever heard Washington swear. “I confess I was disconcerted, astonished, and confounded by the words and the manner in which His Excellency accosted me,” Lee recalled. In 1900, a “new” eyewitness account (albeit delivered secondhand across the span of two sixty-year generations) surfaced in the magazine of the Daughters of the Revolution. At a dinner party in 1840, a Major Jacob Morton, then eighty years old, claimed to have been at the scene and acknowledged that Washington looked “like a thunder cloud before the lightning flash,” but he vehemently denied that the general used any inappropriate language. That must have been a moment!
In Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis bends the ears of an anxious telegraph crew with one of the president’s favorite shaggy-dog tales, recounting the tale of Ethan Allen encountering a portrait of George Washington in an outhouse in England after the Revolutionary War. His hosts were eager to see the reaction of their visitor, who stumped them by approving: “There is nothing to make an Englishman shit quicker than the sight of General George Washington.” That’s really funny, eh.
Now I admit that I am not 100% sure the word fuck was deployed, probably not, but cursing is cursing and “fuck” is the king of curse words, so far.
Andrew Jackson gifted his wife an African gray parrot named Poll. After the first lady died, Jackson ended up spending a lot of time with the bird, who picked up on some of Jackson’s foul-mouthed habits. Poll was present at Jackson’s 1845 funeral, where he reportedly began spewing out curse word after curse word in front of the crowd. According to the not-liberal-yet creek-stream (too small to be main stream yet) Washington Post, Poll “let loose perfect gusts of ‘cuss words,’” so many that people were “horrified and awed at the bird’s lack of reverence.” The bird finally “had to be carried from the house.” I’m pretty sure Poll fucked up the place.
IMO, Watergate captured a crossover moment for cursing: it was a time when pernicious language was still seen as bad enough to indicate something about the character of the speaker—today, that power is retained by slurs but not so much by vulgarities—as public use of once-taboo terms is becoming far less surprising than it had been. IMO, this too shall pass especially, like Larry, the public pushes back against ALL OCCURENCES, not just pointing fingers of blame at the other side as the weak among us are prone to do.
For example, where’s the outrage over Donald Trump referring to African nations as “shithole countries” in 2018? But it’s not just Trump, it’s everyone.
Before he became the 42nd president, Bush dropped the F-bomb several times during a 1999 interview with Tucker Carlson for Talk magazine.
During an economic summit in London in 1983, détente with the Soviet Union got heated between Reagan and Trudeau. Reagan’s approach to easing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union proved unpopular with some of the meeting’s attendees, prompting him to pound his fist on the table and yell “God damn it, Pierre” at the politician. Yet despite this outburst, Reagan never wrote down a curse word, even in his own private diaries.
In 2004, Vice President Cheney told Senator Patrick Leahy to “go fuck himself” after a testy argument about Cheney’s ties to Halliburton. Later, Cheney told comedian Dennis Miller, “That’s sort of the best thing I ever did.” You gotta love that truth-teller.
Believing he had an audience of one, Bush called Clymer a “major-league asshole.” Hot mike, oops. Bush was honest too and used his sense of humor to offer an apology of sorts when he taped a message for the press corps attending an annual dinner, calling Clymer a “major league ass . . . etc.” Bush could always get away with that, such a jovial, friendly guy.
“People said my language was bad,” recalled Nixon, “but Jesus, you should have heard LBJ” showed how Nixon, not swearing, still invokes “Jesus.” When referring to the difference between a senator and a representative, he saiid: “I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy’s window and say it smells like roses.” Now that’s a profane man.
JFK could swear like a sailor (which he was) away from the microphone. When it leaked that the Air Force had spent $5,000 to furnish a maternity suite for Jackie Kennedy at Otis Air Force Base, the president knew the expenditure would be used as a political football. “This is obviously a fuck-up,” he screamed to an unlucky general over the phone. Imagine his language over a Muslim gift of AirForce Two or Noem’s sky-bound pleasure palace “deportation luxury liner” for her forays into adultery.
The folksy “Give ‘Em Hell Harry” was beloved by some and shocked others with colorful language he attributed to his youthful days working on the Santa Fe railroad, when he slept in hobo camps. In Truman’s eyes, General Douglas MacArthur was a “dumb son of a bitch,” and Nixon was “a shifty-eyed goddamned liar.” “I never did give them hell,” he once reminisced. “I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.” It was an earlier, simpler time.
Yes, swearing comes and goes and right now, especially in public or professional settings. It has come unto its own recently. IMO, it’s the Trump effect since when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and our “shock and aw shucks” President has shocked us by lowering the curse-word bar while being left off the hook with Larrys “aw shucks, it’s locker-room braggadocio” or similar. I say the current trend is in response to our President. Not necessarily caused by our President, but I think we all know “who’s on first.”
Another good expression is saying that you hope someone’s mother runs from under the porch and bites them. Or perhaps that they have arthritis draw their nose into their ass crack and that they live forever.