Posted on 05/09/2019 11:19:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
One of my favorite 1960s anecdotes comes from legendary broadcaster Larry King, who tells of attending his first roast at New York City’s Friars Club. There, French actor Maurice Chevalier dared to utter the F-word live on stage. King was practically blown out of his seat. “I thought I’d die,” he recalls.
Today, as King himself has noted, the F-bomb — once known as the ultimate forbidden verbal lightning bolt, the Utterance That Must Not Be Named, or at least the word of last resort to use when you’re really hopelessly mad — might as well be growing out of random cracks in the sidewalk. In 2019, the F-word is a throwaway. It is a sneeze. It is as common as dandelion fluff.
Does anyone else find this awkward? Mock me if you will — no doubt my quest is a lonely one — but I certainly do.
Just the other day, while I was communing with a wildly energetic and occasionally shouty spin instructor in my garage — I am the enthusiastic new owner of one of those Peloton workout bikes where you can beam into classes via an Internet-connected screen — I discovered that even the most winsome and cheerful Peloton instructor might one day randomly bombard you with the F-bomb. In my case, this happened right in the middle of an insanely steep fake “hill” climb and a cheerily judgmental pop song. (If the song had happened to be Ariana Grande’s regrettably catchy hit “Thank U, Next,” or perhaps Pink’s unedited “F-ing Perfect,” I could have absorbed approximately seven bonus F-words for good measure.)
I have since discovered that Peloton classes have labels and filters for explicit language, which is certainly nice of them. I somehow missed this the first go-round, because just as no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, I naïvely failed to expect that my workout bike would one day curse at me like my own personal Colonel Jessup from A Few Good Men.
Thankfully, my kids were out of earshot when that particular F-bomb dropped. Unfortunately, there have been plenty of others to go around. My kids were in exceptionally clear eyeshot on a different day, for instance, when we happened to pass a bored-looking young lady sporting a tank top that declared, “YOU MUST HAVE ME CONFUSED FOR SOMEONE WHO GIVES A [F-WORD].” The word in question was, of course, uncensored, helpfully available for every kindergartener in a 20-foot radius to see.
What is wrong with everyone? Have we lost our national “edit” button? (I’ll answer my own question, because the answer is obvious: Yes.)
The F-bomb has long been with us, but the growing tendency to cheerfully, unhesitatingly use it in any old circumstance is something new and alarming. Forget venturing into R-rated movies or edgy art galleries: Take your kid into a random gift shop in the Texas hill country these days, and you might find cutesy hand towels embroidered with swear words that would have made young Larry King faint. Beto O’Rourke, always game to roll on the bad-idea bandwagon, gained notoriety during his Senate campaign for letting an impressive parade of F-bombs fly. Self-help books with the F-word fly off the shelves, even though — at least in the humble opinion of this writer, who grew up in the famously repressed rolling fields of the American Midwest — “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Rip” would make for just as compelling a title as “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a” — well, I’ll stop there. You know what word is coming next.
It gets worse: Just last week, Burger King, which is gross even without the help of swear words, launched a series of mood-themed “Real Meals,” questionable foodstuffs boxed with wonderfully poetic names like — you guessed it — the DGAF Meal. (DGAF, in case you’re still gloriously unaware, stands for “Don’t Give a [You Know What].”)
Weirdly, Burger King released these meal deals as part of “Mental-Health Awareness” month. That seems paradoxical at best, but since we’re speaking of mental health, let’s take this moment to get philosophical. My crusade against the public explosion of the F-bomb, you see, goes beyond simple manners. Much like, say, The Lego Batman Movie, it is far deeper than it appears.
In many ways, words can shape our very perception of reality. Edward Sapir, who helped develop the hypothesis of linguistic relativity in the 1930s, put it this way: “Human beings . . . are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. . . . The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.”
It’s a radical idea, but what if it contains a grain of truth? What does our society’s thunderstorm of public F-bombs do to our greater sensibility, cultural or otherwise? When the worst swear word becomes commonplace, what do we use to describe the truly horrific? What happened to mystery and subtlety? For that matter, what happened to the fashion sense of people who regularly sport shirts that evoke memories of the early routines of Andrew Dice Clay?
It is no surprise, I suppose, that the F-bomb has become ubiquitous as our culture’s exhibitionism has gotten out of control. But here we can draw at least one consolation: Back at the Friars Club in the Sixties, the F-word was shocking and rare, at least when uttered in public. Today, it’s emblazoned in insouciant acronyms on the packaging of mass-produced Burger King meals.
Behold, America: The F-bomb has officially entered the realm of the hopelessly banal. Who knows? Perhaps if we’re lucky, Americans will get bored with using it — and that might just save us all.
Forking “f” bomb.
As Bob Knight said, the most expressive word in the English language. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bob+knight+f+word&docid=608002497004635322&mid=6E55F2FC1344B955BF576E55F2FC1344B955BF57&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
The Irish defanged the ‘f’’ word by removing the ‘’u’’ and replacing it with ‘’e’’. “Feck’’.
It was everyday language in the Army when around other soldiers, not acceptable among the officer corps in more formal settings. Having said that, I still consider a woman just short of a street walker when I hear her use the word. Men who use it are considered very low on the social ladder, in my mind. In other words, not acceptable in polite company.
The more you use it, the bigger the hold the left has on you.
We just have substituted a different set of unacceptable words. A TV personality can get away with saying the “F word” on air, but his career is over if he says the “N word”.
One reason (out of many) American women are so trashy.
Millenials use the F word as much as Hillary says uh, or you know.
Was recently out to dinner with 4-5 guys at a business function last night, they were out of control had been drinking since noon. If there was a sentence without the Fword I did not hear it all evening.
I like my women just a little on the trashy side.
No, the unfortunate thing is that its applicable to more and more people living in this country today.
It’s the only word that’s a noun, pro-noun, verb, adverb, adjective and exclamation! Rather sad Ralphie gets his mouth washed out and we use it as an exclamation point in everything
Maybe Alec Baldwin can help them.
Glen and Gary and Glen and Ross (Language)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QipAqdomO3I
The most versatile word in the English language.
A half-century ago, when I was on a crew surveying soon-to-be Highway 16 out in the middle of the wilderness, a stubborn gas-powered generator could not be started.
Our laconic mechanic, after half an hour of silent greasy fumbling and cord-pulling stood back and announced,”The ****ing ****er’s ****ed!”
‘Nuff said!
.
Patrick: Oh, hey! I think I know what that 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 over anything you say, and Wham-O! You’ve got yourself a spicy sentence sandwich!
If you drop F Bombs casually, what will you say when you are really, really riled up? More F Bombs? Or will you start getting physically aggressive? There need to be some words that are saved for last, as it were. For the sake of civil order and safety.
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