Cursing on ESPN.com

My criticism isn't of the writing -- yes, it's frat-boy writing, but Simmons has made a lucrative career of that. It's of the editing and the decision-making. There are plenty of F-bombs in Grantland copy, too, and those stories get linked to off ESPN.com's home page, too. It just strikes me as hypocritical, especially with no sort of parental warning. I don't fucking care if my kid reads a fucking curse, but I'm sure there are those out there who fucking do, and that's their fucking right. ESPN has never given any fucking indication that it's anything but fucking G-rated, and they love to get all fucking high and mighty on others. Yet, here they are, fucking linking to fucks. What the fuck?

 

Forget you, clown.

 

What would be a well-used curse, or a good reason for one?

Virtuallly all cursing is extaneous and superfluous, occurring thoughtlessly and doing nothing but showing a person's capability as a potty-mouth.

It's too casual and careless. That's the problem with cursing in general, and it doesn't make the impact/emphasis that I think most people are going for when they do it.

 

The entire history of literature disagrees with you.

 

Amen.

Aside from literature, Write, I point you to the work of George Carlin. You may not like him, but if you saw him perform and thought he was lazy or careless with language, you are truly beyond help.

 

Well, that may be so.

I'm never too impressed when I see it in literature, either. Even among some of the most obvious and noteable examples, the cursing, and the intent to write/sound the way people speak is more often a turn-off, and a distraction, to me than anything else.

Not that I consider the example we're talking about here to be anything close to "literature," anyway.

 

This guy says me, casual and careless? Fuck you!

 

It's not. And it's hypocritical to link from ESPN.com, which bans blue language, to Grantland, which does not, without a warning.

That said, from Chaucer to Joyce to Salinger to Roth, a well-turned obscenity is as much a part of poetry as any word in the language.

 

Ralphie had heard all the warnings, read SportsJournalists.com for years. And yet, he couldn't help himself. Well, rules are rules. Fuck.



(Next week, Ralphie makes that face once too often and it stays that way.)

 

Started to read the story to see what this post was about, realized that it was written by Bill Simmons. Pass. I have neither the time or the patience to read his overwritten feces.

 

On this Monday-to-Friday plane!