Chuck you, Farley

July 28, 2006 at 1:09 am (Uncategorized)

Mark Twain once said: “There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It’s dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.”

The issue has come up a lot lately in the newsroom. But there is no moral debate on the streets about the proper use of profanity. You are either in favor of cussing or you are not.

Witness a confrontation between an older woman and a teen outside a downtown store. A string of profanity crackles through the calm summer air like the tip of a whip. This nasty oration was uttered by one who clearly has been trained in the mystical art of Obscenity Fu.

“Do you have to talk that way?” said the other, more puritan party. “It’s not appropriate.”

Now, if you’re assuming that it was the older woman who chastised the teen about his potty mouth, guess again. It was the gray-haired lady who sung a song of swearwords and the wholesome lad who asked her to stop.

You just never know. Gutter talk is learned behavior and it stretches back to the time of cavemen, when a primitive man whacked his thumb with a club and shouted a nasty oath. Primitive birds took wing. Primitive women blushed and pressed hairy hands to their lips. Nasty Neanderthal knew that he was onto something.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There’s a right way and a wrong way to swear. At a poker game, working on the car, in a street fight, watching the Kansas City Royals beat up on the Red Sox … all perfectly acceptable conditions for letting loose. At your daughter’s wedding, a funeral or a job interview, not so acceptable. And you learn that the hard way.

Me, I’m a profanity moderate. I have argued in the past that mild swearing is an integral part of communication. In the proper context, a lukewarm turn of phrase can add emphasis to a point, illustrate your state of mind or add texture to an otherwise bland sentiment.

Swearing can make you feel better. Twain wisely observed that the use of profanity can provide a level of relief not attained even through prayer.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide examples of good swearing and bad swearing in this forum. The Sun Journal takes a fairly rigid approach to keeping possibly potential could-be-taken-wrong words and phrases out of their pages. Just try infusing a “darn” or a “friggin'” into your copy and you could be banished to the weather beat, which will make you swear more than ever.

Recently, I was castigated for using the word “poop” in a piece of writing that required a description of the foul stuff that comes out of dogs. Call me crazy, but poop is a mild, almost playful word. More scientific terms, like defecation or excrement, look and sound much more descriptive when discussing that kind of substance.

More recently, a brood of Sun Journal editors hung upside down in their cave to discuss a quote I had included in a piece about my recent travels with goofy shoes. In that piece, a woman commented that I was apparently gifted with a great deal of courage to have embarked while shod in such embarrassing fashion.

Only, the woman expressed herself far more colorfully. And while discussing the matter, one of the editors began chirping and batting his wings to alert the others that he was not pleased with that quote. Oh, no. Not pleased at all. And so, I had to paraphrase that quote in a manner that would imply exactly what the woman on the street said without actually using her words.

Would it surprise you to learn that I don’t always agree with editors?

I also was taken to task for attempting to use a two-part word that implies a person is of limited intelligence and also resembling somebody’s backside. It’s a word you hear all the time on “That 70’s Show” and various other places. And I think the word was eventually allowed. So, why am I being a dumbass and skirting it now?

I never had my mouth washed out with soap when I was a kid. I hung out in pool halls where masters of cussing demonstrated the most mouth-dropping feats of profanity gymnastics I’ve seen, before or since. I learned the value of vulgarity from the best.
Even so, I don’t descend into gutter talk all that often. Driving through Auburn will tease obscenities from me because driving through Auburn is inch-by-inch locomotion from H-E-double-pogo-sticks. Insomnia will cause me to unleash, because I believe swearing coaxes sleep-inducing melatonin from the pineal glands. It’s all very scientific.

I’m not foul-mouthed by nature. And I know that someone needs to man the gate and make sure true filth does not find its way to the eyes of those who would be offended.
But I also bristle at the suggestion that all forms of off-color speech are bad and the people who speak it are derelicts.

As the brilliant Mark Twain once said: “When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear.”

That Twain was one smart son-of-a-bitch.