On Shouting "Fuck"

In A Crowded Monkeyhouse.
(click for larger, 'cause, well, I'm rather pleased with it.*)

(And the original, because I realize it is
possible that not everyone is familiar with

antique cigarette ads.)

This from Nación del Netroots as filtered through the NYT:

July 18, 2008

Easing Off Online Obscenities

By Katharine Q. Seelye

AUSTIN — Has anyone noticed a decline in the use of obscenities in the blogosphere lately (well, at least when various public figures aren’t being quoted)?

Some prominent bloggers on a panel here at Netroots Nation said today that for a variety of reasons, they have scaled back their use of profanity. Others said they were swearing as much as they ever had.

Digby Parton, who writes on Hullabaloo.com, said she initially thought of her blog as an ephemeral form of conversation among friends and used vulgarities freely. But now she is read by a substantially wider circle and has cleaned up her language.

“I don’t use the same amount of profanity,” she said. “We’re taken much more seriously as a political force,” and she has a stronger sense that her words are “out there for posterity.”

Still, she said, she does not want to take a restrictive view toward language and doesn’t always hold back.

Next on the panel was Lee Papa, a theater professor at the College of Staten Island (part of the CUNY system) who writes the Rude Pundit, which gives you an idea of where he’s coming from.

He said he started his blog during the buildup to the war in Iraq, when, he said, disagreement with the idea of going to war was suppressed. One example: Shortly before the Iraqi invasion, in 2003, Phil Donahue’s talk show, which was often anti-war, was cancelled by MSNBC, even though it was the highest rated of the network’s such shows; an internal memo later revealed that executives thought Mr. Donahue’s would be “a difficult face for NBC in a time of war.”

Mr. Papa said his impulse toward vulgarity, including references to rape, was a reaction to that climate of suppression. Besides, he said, “I curse a lot in my daily life.”

But now, he said, he curses a lot less, almost as if he has developed an internal quota system that lets him get it out of the way each morning.

...

In the end, no one seemed too concerned about the use of obscenities in the blogosphere or whether it undermined their arguments. They more or less shrugged over the recent off-color language used by Jesse Jackson about Senator Barack Obama, language that some mainstream media repeated and others did not.
...

I kinda believe that if someone purloined half of Digby's consonants and her "A", "I" and "Y", she could still write most of the rest of us under the table.

That being said, this struck me as a rather bizarre panel for the purveyor/practitioners of an outsider-if-no-longer-outlaw medium to even be having in the first place (not that I wouldn't have been in the audience myself were I there.)

As wiser people than me have observed --

"Of all the strange crimes that humanity has legislated out of nothing, blasphemy is the most amazing - with obscenity and indecent exposure fighting it out for second and third place."

[Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long]

-- "obscenity" is a null concept.

Like the actual act of fucking, wielding the “f-word” (or any other term that culture and history have hollowed out and loaded with lead shot and H-bombs) is all a matter of competence and intent. If your skills are poor (as was the case with a certain bit of "New Yorker" cover art I could name), or your heart is dark, things will eventually end badly.

But if you know what you’re doing, it can be very nice. And if you do it with élan, it can be damn well transcendent.

But America media hass rammed down our collective throats a public definition of “obscenity” that is really very simple:

If you can’t say it on the teevee, it’s obscene; if you can, it’s not.

By that perverse, inverse, pitilessly-utilitarian definition, here (in honor of the Patron Saint of every vituperative, foul-mouthed blogger) are seven things so monstrous and obscene that you can never, ever, ever say them on teevee:

1. Joe Lieberman was and is a lying, warmongering weasel.

2. They don't hate us for our freedom.

3. Our democracy is a gutshot mess, and the GOP is holding gun.

4. The prime directive of our media is to scare us, flatter us and lobotomize us into giving our money to corporations in exchange for crap that makes us sick.

5. A disturbingly large number of our fellow citizens are jaw-droppingly stupid and/or intractably bigoted.

6. Genuine Christianity's worst enemies are Conservative Evangelical Fundamentalist Christians.

7. You can be a good American or you can be a good Republican, but you can no longer be both.

These define the circumference of the wholly-artificial Obscenity Perimeter the Media Villagers have invented to keep scary rabble from getting in front of a camera and making wee-wee in their mojitos.

But there is another definition of “obscenity” that is not at all ridiculous or arbitrary. One that virtually every inkslinging social critic from Swift to Twain to Mencken to Royko to Hunter Thompson would have recognized.

See if you can spot it.

Almost exactly eight years ago, the-Governor George W. Bush was running for President by telling people that he luuuurved him some Sweet Baby Jebus, that he would “restore honor and dignity to the White House” (emphasis added) --

George W. Bush Speaks at Send-Off in Orlando
Aired September 23, 2000 - 10:02 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: We are going to quickly, before we stay goodbye, go to a Bush event in Orlando.

Let's listen in.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I tell you one thing, it's got to be refreshing for the people of Florida to have a chief executive officer who has done in office exactly what he told the people of Florida that we would do.

...
We can do better in Washington D.C. We can have new leadership in Washington D.C., leadership that will lift this country's spirits and raise our sights. George P. knows what thousands of other youngsters know, that just because the White House has let us done in the past, that doesn't mean it's going to happen in the future. George P. joins us in a campaign that's going to restore honor and dignity to the White House.

-- and he would “clean up the toxic environment in Washington, D.C.”.

April 27, 2000

THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE TEXAS GOVERNOR; Balancing Two Worlds in Washington

By ALISON MITCHELL

For once, George W. Bush was not acting like the Washington outsider.
…
Mr. Bush has been showcasing Democrats all this week. But for all his protests about partisanship, he and the other Republican speakers were unsparing of Mr. Gore at the party's gathering.

Jim Nicholson, the Republican National Committee chairman, said, ''Welcome to the R.N.C.'s Al Gore retirement party.'' And Mr. Bush sharply jabbed his opponent, calling him ''an integral part of an administration that has waged the same old Washington blame game.''

''Last week was Earth Day,'' he said. ''Unfortunately for Al Gore's campaign every day is scorched earth day. And it's time to clean up the toxic environment in Washington, D.C.''
…

Turned out, after seven year in office, we now know in bitter retrospect that what the Dirty Fucking Hippies were predicting at the time was all true: that what Republicans meant by all of their jolly chin-music was showing up every day ready to rape the Constitution, loot the treasury and lie to the American people, clean-shaven, in a suit and tie, wear a flag lapel pin and toting a Bible.

And given the unprecedentedly brutal, venal and nakedly treasonous history the Commander Guy's administration has racked up in the last seven years, approximately one-third of our fellow citizens still believe with all their widdle hearts that George Walker Bush is quite possibly the Greatest President Evah.

Before we can fix is wrong with America, we must confront the ugly reality that these failed, morally inbred, Christalopithecans Are. The. Problem.

That simple, terrifying fact will never, ever, ever show up on the teevee.

And that is fucking obscene.