Posted on 01/04/2009 6:23:33 PM PST by sionnsar
Today we are going to deal with the media coverage of profanities, expletives, vulgarisms, obscenities, execrations, epithets and imprecations, nouns often lumped together by the Bluenose Generation as coarseness, crudeness, bawdiness, scatology or swearing. But roundheeled readers should stop smacking their lips and rubbing their hands because the deliberately shocking subject can be treated with decorum, in plain words, without the titillating examples of “dirty words.” (Titillating, from the Latin titillare, “to tickle,” is clean.)
If you want to fulminate about such prissiness about prurience in print, feel free to rattle your jowls, blow your stack and otherwise express your outrage with the typographical device to which cartoonists have resorted for generations: !#*&%@%!!!
The need for today’s review is the coverage given to the participial modifier employed with great frequency and immortalized on recordings of telephone conversations made by the F.B.I. as its shocked — shocked! — agents eavesdropped on Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor. His favorite intensifier was reproduced in many newspapers and Internet sites with dashes as “----ing” or with asterisks as “****ing” and was substituted in broadcasts, telecasts and Netcasts as a word descriptive of the sound called bleep. The Wall Street Journal went almost all the way, using both the first letter and three dashes in the participle before “golden,” the word it modified.
Here’s how The Washington Post handled it (with italics mine): “The governor, whose alleged dishonesty was matched only by his profanity...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
Can’t they just say, “Bleeping FReep!” like civilized people? (Boy, did I get looks in church when Pat said, “Bleepin’ FReep, Tom! Get off my foot!”)
LOL!!!
He should be *** whipped, *&*&ed with a hot poker and boiled in a bucket of %!!%.
Oh fudge it!
Whats the point man? L0L
I have known many a person who cussed a mean streak that was decent at heart, and many.. who played a good game who were jerks...
SpongeBob: Hmm.. someone didn’t finish this one.
Patrick: That word?
SpongeBob: No, that one!
Patrick: Hmm... #$%%#! Uh, hey! I think I know what that word means. That’s one of those sentence enhancers.
SpongeBob: Sentence enhancers?
Patrick: You use them when you want to talk fancy. You just sprinkle it on anything you say, and.. Wham-O! You’ve got yourself a spicy sentence sandwich!
SpongeBob: Oh, I get it! Here, let me try. Umm.. hello Patrick, what #$%#%$^ weather we’re having, isn’t it?
Patrick: Why, yes it is, SpongeBob. This $%#$^%& day is $%#%^&% lovely!
SpongeBob: How $%#%#%^ right you are, Patrick. Patrick: %$#^$%#.
SpongeBob: %$%#%#%.
Patrick: %#$%^#$.
SpongeBob: You’re right, Patrick, my lips are tingling from the spiciness of this conversation.
Patrick: Oh, mine too.
One of the cable channels, maybe USA, was showing the movie “A Fish Called Wanda” the other day - in the scene where the Otto character drives wildly into traffic almost hitting another driver and then yells “A$$hole” at the driver, they tried to bleep the “offensive” word out - but the “A$$” part came through loud and clear, while the “hole” part went silent - sure am glad we didn’t have to listen to that......
Safire’s the only reason to read that magazine.
"...the Watergate unpleasantness... "
How delightfully euphemistic!
I can beat that—I’m hard of hearing and use the closed caption option on my tv (when it’s readable—sometimes I swear they get chimpanzees to write the words!!!)—the sound will bleep, but a lot of times the word shows up on the screen! Kind of defeats the purpose, LOL.
We are becoming a more crass society each year...
We are. I am from time to time verbally correcting language that in my youth would have led to certain punishment. (And not just because I was a P.K.)
Think I’ll start watching the closed captioning a bit more......
Oh, sometimes you are in for an eyeful! I’ve seen made up words that sound like what was said, but make absolutely no sense in context whatsoever...must be hard to get good, fast typists for that job! :-)
Two words — Maury Povich. [feel free to substitute any daytime ‘talk’ show name]
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