Is "turning a filthy phrase with the skill of a rap artist" supposed to be a good thing? Maybe I just haven't been reading the right threads, but this is probably my first time here seeing the skill of rap artists presented in a possibly positive light. (It's probably also my first time here seeing Martin Luther compared to a rap artist. I got 95 theses, but a...)
Here I also have in mind the policy of the Religion Moderator (yes, we're in "News/Activism"), which strikes me as unusually strict for our times on a forum for adults--though maybe in a refreshing way:
Any Religion Forum post which contains potty language - or references to potty language - will be pulled as soon as I see it. If you are new to the Religion Forum and wonder where your post went, it may well be that you used a word like "crap" or "BS".
All the same, I can't get too exercised about the example in the original post.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but one big reason is the "self-censoring" on the sign. I've noticed that presumably legitimate and serious news sources are spelling out certain words nowadays. The level of profanity seems to have gone up even around here lately--without even hunting for examples, I've seen multiple posts where a certain word is spelled out in full.
“Is “turning a filthy phrase with the skill of a rap artist” supposed to be a good thing? “
It depends upon the culture. In the Medieval Germany of Martin Luther it was not considered out of bounds. It would be today and especially on a Religion board so I wouldn’t recommend quoting some of Luther’s pithier invectives.
You can find scatological jokes in Shakespeare. They’re easy to read past because the English phrases he employed are dated. Ben Franklin penned an essay that some find offensive today. Earthy talk was much more common in Colonial America, especially among some Scots Irish. There’s a couple of creeks in western Virginia whose original names absolutely couldn’t be posted here. It wasn’t a sign of ignorance or low breeding, it was just a different cultural climate than today.