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<p>I couldn’t agree more. But seriously, the government lost their case on this, and they’re not giving up. Waste of tax dollars, don’t you think?</p>
<p>ASAP, think you are right, nothing FOX or the Feds do is not planned</p>
<p>But, substituting a word for S by saying poop is still talking about stuff that comes out the behind!!!</p>
<p>The substitution of the words is kind of faux as it were, as if talking about poop is so much less offensive than talking about S</p>
<p>Neither is called for in certain company, but somehow those few words are given much more power and influcence than they deserve</p>
<p>A way of distracting from other issues</p>
<p>For instances, Janets booby…please…what was more offensive, that or Enron?</p>
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These laws were in place and enforced well before the current administration.</p>
<p>Why those words? Historical accident. English has a three strand vocabulary list: Anglo-saxon, Latin, and French. The Anglo-saxon had the lowest class status, the Latin the highest. Read home, residence, domicile as examples. All the words we consider obscene (I don’t) come from Anglo-saxon. The Latinate words are allowable.</p>
<p>Consider v***** (I don’t know if I can write that) and c***. The former is an acceptable anatomical term, the latter a very objectional slur. However, the literal meaning of the former is sheath to a sword (go ahead, figure it out) and the latter is just the Anglo-saxon name of a body part, now considered unsayable. I’m probably the only one who doesn’t consider the c-word obscene for the reasons I’ve detailed above.</p>
<p>Vonnegut made the point about actions versus words very succinctly in HOCUS POCUS. The narrator, Eugene Debs Hartke, had sent many men to their deaths in Vietnam after lying to them, acts he himself found heinous. On the other hand, he refused to use any obscenity and frequently used the phrase “when the excrement hits the air conditioning” with no awareness of how ridiculous it was to put a fence around language and not actions. However, the reader is meant to have awareness of this.</p>
<p>I had a conversation today with my mom. She was upset that the San Diego official (mayor? ) caved in allowing gays rights because he had a lesbian daughter. “Why?,” I asked? " Because the gays are the reason our society is falling apart. People like that destroy our society."</p>
<p>Ok, my mom is an 80 year old Republican who voted for Bush (and now regrets it ) but I was still surprised. “Mom. How many gays do you know? Where are all these people that are destroying your way of life?” </p>
<p>You’ll love this. “In San Francisco!” she answered. ;)</p>
<p>These are the people that the administration is playing to. And they are very effective. My mom’s not even religious, but she hates gays and Hillary Clinton. They are destroying the fabric of our society. She’s convinced.</p>
<p>ucla dad. OK, but they lost their case. Why won’t they let it drop?</p>
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<p>JMO - they want to bring the whole episode up again in the media.
Liberal Hollywood hurts families. Republicans protect them.</p>
<p>Election time I guess, showing how “hollywood” is the downfall of all that is righteous and good…</p>
<p>When my Ds were little, they would call each other the meanest names, but no cussing:</p>
<p>pencil face, jello gut, you know, to experiment, not cussing, but probably more mean</p>
<p>I get the historic content, and thanks for the info mythmom, that is good stuff</p>
<p>When you think about lies, and such, and those aren’t considered vulgar, but a WORD is, even if it is used to say, that is Effen amazing…our sense of what is vulgar is very skewed</p>
<p>Yes, it is.</p>
<p>CGM:</p>
<p>So, do you use those words a lot? Do you like hearing them? Do you think it’s okay to use them around your own kids, around others’ kids, around grandparents, around anyone in general? Would it be fine with you if kids are barraged with those words on broadcast TV? Would it be fine with you if you had no way of knowing when those words might be used in movies so you as a parent could judge whether you want your kids to attend the movie?</p>
<p>Did you think the word you used before “amazing” in your post added a lot of value?</p>
<p>For interesting perspective on how the use of banned words and obscenity laws can destroy a life, rent the movie “Lenny” starring Dustin Hoffman, all about Lenny Bruce. In the 1960’s, he was persecuted to death over these words, which comedians and entertainers use now like bread-n-butter. Good acting there, too, Dusty.</p>
<p>I had a losing battle with my kids when I objected to the phrase, “That sucks.” Well, not a lost battle because they did finally understand that some phrases cause people to recoil and stop listening to the rest of their sentence. So if they want their ideas to be LISTENED TO and taken seriously (and they desperately want that), they clean up their phraseology in front of dinosaurs like myself.</p>
<p>How do words hurt people? I really don’t understand. And no, I wouldn’t use these words around other people’s children because their folks might object; I didn’t use them around my children so they would not get into the habit of saying things other people judged them for. But my mom? Haha, she’s an elegant, college educated woman, but she uses them more than I.</p>
<p>As for movies, words don’t bother me, but the violence that even PG movies have does.</p>
<p>Again, “curse” words are just conventions. We could make any work off limits, like banana face or horse manure. The Victorians thought it was so shocking to see legs, or even ankles, that piano legs had to be covered, and chair legs too.</p>
<p>D*** I can see, though I don’t agree, because it offends a religious sense. The other words may be ugly, but there are so many far uglier things in the world, hate, images of violence, greed, avarice, vaulting ambition, and we don’t legislate or exile these things.</p>
<p>Again, how does a more basic and Anglo-saxon word for excrement and an Anglo-saxon and basic word for coitus hurt us? </p>
<p>If you don’t like hearing them, I understand that. I don’t like hearing Andrea Bocelli because I think he is always flat, but I wouldn’t legislate against him or be incensed if someone I knew played his recordings. Nor would I boycot his concerts. Nor would I think my taste the only important taste.</p>
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<p>I waged that battle with my Ds, but I won after I told them what “suck” meant in my day (i.e.,phallatio). They were horrified and I never heard either of them say that word again!</p>
<p>Yes, as a writer I find “sucks” a very weak way to communicate, indeed. Still, I find it funny, especially because I don’t think the kids use it with the connotation of fellatio. I sometimes say it to my students, with the implied quotations, and I think they hear how silly it sounds but appreciate my willngness to enter into their world.</p>
<p>Mythmom preempted my literary discourse. I would just like to add that the nobility of England was dominated by French-speaking Normans after the conquest. The common folk spoke English and used “crude” Anglo-Saxon vocabulary and the better sort of folk (the Norman nobility) spoke French. Of course, the educated classes, mostly in the church, used Latin, so that was high-class, too. </p>
<p>It’s not that the words were vulgar (because, after all, “vulgar” comes from the Latin for “common people”), it’s that they were the words used by the common folk. Even though French went out of use in the English nobility, the French and Latin vocabulary remained the sign of the proper people.</p>
<p>mythmom,</p>
<p>Thanks for correcting my spelling. While typing my last entry (#31), I realized I didn’t know how to spell “fellatio” (I haven’t seen that word in years) so guessed that it was similar to “phallus.” You never know what you might learn here on CC! lol</p>
<p>Like your students, my Ds disputed that “fellatio” was the current meaning of the word “suck,” but I think the imagery was enough to make them remove it from their vocabulary anyway.</p>
<p>You want to fix the “attitude”, then fix the larger picture. Get rid of “POLITICAL CORRECTNESS” There’s already plenty of threads on that on the internet. Convince people to stop whining because someone said someone was “FAT” instead of “Heavy Set”. </p>
<p>Have people be PROUD of their occupation and the hard work they perform instead of someone trying to boost their ego by “Renaming” their job. e.g. “Sanitation Engineer” (Garbage Man). </p>
<p>While we’re at it, tell people to stop B*tching because the suffix “MAN” is part of a word such as garbageman. Salesman, Congressman. If you just have to be a garbagewoman, that’s ok, but the garbagePERSON attitude has to go. </p>
<p>At the same time, get RID OF ALL Hyphens in the dictionary. All they do is separate. We do not need African-American, Asian-America, Mexican-American, etc… when by grandparents immigrated to this country in the 1900’s through Ellis Island, that’s how they showed someone NOT BORN IN AMERICA; Italian-American, Irish-American, German-American; They also did it in the 1900’s to separate the Jews in Germany. They were considered “German-Jews” instead of “REAL GERMANS”. Get rid of this political correctness CRAP. Be an American “If you were born here”. Hyphenated American are fine if they weren’t born here and immigrated later on.</p>
<p>Finally, teach people to stop having “Thin Skins”. Don’t get so ***<em>ed off because of WHAT another person said. Look deeper into what they probably MEANT. Most times, there was NO OFFENSE intended. Educate each other. At the same time, the different ethnic groups need to STOP using the same words in their daily vocabulary among their group that they DON’T WANT OTHERS REFERRING TO THEM AS. You know what I’m talking about. There are words in the Black, Hispanic, Asian, and other micro-cultures in our country that they used continuously. Even sometimes as a term of endearment. Yet, when an outside uses the same word, a race riot starts. That’s total Bulls$</em>t.</p>
<p>Stop this B.S. attitude in elementary school where children aren’t allowed to “Keep Score” when playing a game because it “Hurts the feelings” of the child who didn’t “Win”. Weeeee; too damn bad. 1st; it’s just a game. 2nd; Winning and losing represents REAL LIFE. Some times you GET the job, promotion, advancement, recognition, etc… and sometimes you don’t. It is MORE important to learn how to handle the rejection and set backs of NOT obtaining a certain goal than it is to obtain it and so called “Win”. How the hell is anyone going to learn that skill if you don’t let them learn it as a child in something as simple as a game. Same with schools not letting kids play “TAG” because it promotes the “Victim vs Perpetrator” attitude. What a crock of S$*t.</p>
<p>Yes, you want to straighten out the english language and stop people from going ballistic because you used words such a <em>, F</em><em>k, D</em>*K, etc…, then work to get rid of ALL POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.</p>
<p>I do want to point out that I am not condoning the use of vulgarity or making it a replacement for the rest of your vocabulary. Most time, your vocabulary represents you level of education, ability to analytically think, etc… Sometime however, using the work "F**K is totally proper in it’s context when you are trying emphasize a certain situation. In that case, it should be used. However, until people get this politically correct crap out of their head, it will never change.</p>