F**k, and cursing in general

I agree about a newsroom, but I no longer work in a newsroom.

 

It did land. I just didn't want to feed a troll when a serious discussion at hand.

 

In Australia, the c-word we cannot type here is practically a term of endearment, and gender-neutral.

 

Even though it is NSFW, this thread can't continue without .........

 

I do think the main difference now is people use cuss words in casual conversation - not really as expletives when they are riled up - they've become very acceptable adjectives. Really would have loved to have seen a School House Rock on cuss words.

"So we rolled out our Expletives!. (yeah, yeah)
We rolled out our Expletives (yeah, yeah)
Now son, words like fuck and shit and ass and bastard are words
words for special occasions.
Like what?

When you drop a hammer on your toe.
When your boss says no to more dough.
When your girl really wants to go to bed.
When your team doesn't cover the spread...."

 

My only pet peeve is control. I clearly have no problem with cursing, but I hate when people cannot control it and involuntarily curse in inappropriate situations.

If you cannot stop it when you’re around children or people who are sensitive to it, you shouldn’t be cursing at all. A good curse word is one of life’s joy. As involuntary tic, it is charmless.

I work in a factory with a bunch of 25-year olds, where every other word from most people is fuck. I still never assume people I talk with are comfortable with it. I try to only curse at inanimate objects as a momentary release of frustration or if I hurt.

On the other hand, I had grandparents who found cursing to be the absolute worst…and then called black people the n-word. So…

 

When I broke my leg and was on the ground surrounded by a large group of kids.
Adult 1: "You OK?"
Me: "No. I just broke my FUCKING leg."
Adult 1: "You sure?"
Adult 2: "Yeah. He wouldn't have said that around all these kids if he wasn't hurt."

 

Totally agree. The problem is that it is so prevalent now as to be ubiquitous, and people are insensitive to it. It makes it so most people really don't care. It's like it's a normal part of speech.

I really started noticing it back when Carl's Jr. had "freakin'" said, like a perfectly normal expression, in one of its TV burger ads a couple of years back. It's like, that's when I knew this ship had sailed. I noticed it, and hated it, every time I saw and heard it, and I couldn't believe it had gotten through for a repeated television ad, with seemingly no one having any problem with it. It was the company's main ad for quite some time, and then, it disappeared, and I know I kind of wondered about that, when it happened, too. But I guessed it was just time for a new ad. I always wondered about that whole promotion, though.

 

Years ago, Spy or Y'all or one of those magazines devoted to fluffier musings published an essay by Roy Blount, Jr. about the fact that "asshole" had wriggled its way into day-to-day adult discourse and thus lost much of its sting as a pejorative. The anecdote he used at the first of the story was about an encounter at a parking garage that ended with a friend of his calling someone a "jerk" and them getting obviously flummoxed by it. He went on to say that it seemed like the normalization of harsher words gave more power to milder expressions of anger and contempt.


My parents hated swearing, but they would have rather heard me drop an F-Bomb than say the N-word or any ethnic, religious, or other kind of social slur.

 

I show this clip in my Mass Comm classes when we’re talking about law and ethics.

An aside: After the clip one semester, a student said that her grandfather was one of the officers who arrested Carlin.

 

IMO, kudos to AP for understanding that ... sorry if it's cliche, but words matter. One of the problems I had with it were that many of the same people who think it's uncouth or inappropriate to swear claimed not to have a problem with this usage ... yet had the stones to act offended when it was printed.

IMO, they needed to know exactly what was said and by whom. Trying to cover it up is censoring, therefore either enabling those who think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread to go right on thinking this. It was my stance that we cover up nothing SPC said in heds or text. Eventually, it was agreed upon that it was not to be used in heds, but was fair game in text.

Also, FWIW, I believe there is a massive difference between common swearing and carnal/ethnic/racial slurs. The former, as long as you're not being too casual around a group of children or in obvious polite company, is acceptable. The latter never is under any setting. Maybe that has to do with working in a sports officials' association as a teenager, before I was old enough to drive. Because my mother, who also officiated in the organization, and I don't look or sound much alike, I got to hear a lot of male GIs thought of my mother as an official. Heard even more of it after I got my license, therefore increasing the odds of showing up in different vehicles for same-site assignments.

When we got home from assignment, we would laugh about it. It offended neither of us ... if anything, it was pure amusement.

 

I don’t like flags, t-shirts etc.
Yeah, yeah, 1st Amendment and all.
I have great nieces and nephews old enough to read but not old enough to need to know what it means.
Having some fucking decency.