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--- Saturday, January 03, 2004
JAY AMBROSE: The big deal of cursing
JAY AMBROSE: The big deal of cursing
Scripps Howard News Service
Last Updated 12:02 p.m. PST Thursday, January 1, 2004
(SH) - Now that John Kerry has uttered the f-word in a Rolling Stone interview and the Federal Communications Commission has said just about any language can pass muster on broadcast TV and radio, the with-it crowd is instructing the rest of us to calm down and go with the flow.
Why, everyone curses like a drunken sailor these days, according to sociology-adoring newspaper articles I've read. And anyone who makes a fuss about it, some of these articles informed me, just doesn't get it that conventions of the anti-obscenity sort have no inherent value anyway. Why, who gives a bleep if someone says bleep?
A couple of points, to start out with:
- Maybe I live in a different America from some pundits and the professors quoted in the newspaper articles, but I seldom hear people talking like that. Sure, there is the cursing of the rebellious young, who should find it in their hearts to forgive themselves as they age. And then there are those reared in the school of hard knocks who overdo it. There's some excuse there. Far less excusable are the Hollywood cuss-freaks - often undereducated comedians - who mistake their juvenile impulses for sophistication and even moral superiority. But most people I know watch what they say.
- I am not the first to suggest there are appropriate and inappropriate places for all kinds of human activities. Few of us think showering in the nude objectionable, unless maybe you do it in your front yard. By the same token, soldiers muttering profanities on a battlefield in the middle of a war is a far cry from offering a toast profuse with four-letter words at a formal dinner where many of the guests will clearly be offended. The latter is a step beyond rude. It could be akin to spitting on the food. When Irish rock singer Bono used the f-word on a live TV broadcast last January, he would had to have been a complete idiot to have thought he wasn't upsetting any of the show's many viewers. Oh, he may have made some of them giggle, too, but people of some maturity were surely watching, people who are shocked by this kind of talk. Did it make him feel good to make them feel bad?
Kerry, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and a presidential candidate, is not in quite the same category. An interview with a rock 'n' roll magazine is not the equivalent of a TV appearance - and yet you wonder what he was up to. Surely he does not use the word so commonly as to have slipped it into the discussion inadvertently, a consequence of habit nullifying alertness. You find yourself supposing (as others have suggested) that he was trying to show himself at one with the magazine's readership.
"Oh, big deal!" says a letter writer to a San Francisco newspaper about Kerry's use of the word. The writer then goes on to say the real obscenities are President Bush's policies. This provides us with a common example of illogic; it scarcely excuses one offense to insist that another offense was far worse.
The letter writer might have contemplated that words are very precious in the human experience and that their use as acts of oral violence entails the risk of extra-oral harmfulness. Most of us know as much on a certain level, even if in thoughtless moments we protest that a word is a word is a word. If it is, why would so few of us ever utter a racial epithet? We don't do it because we recognize that these epithets imply hateful attitudes meant to dehumanize. In a way that is not the same but similar, the f-word connotes a debased view of sex as one person roughly, unaffectionately using another. The word usually implies anger and hostile intent.
The FCC has decided the f-word is OK on broadcast TV if it is used in an adjectival, non-sexual context. While I do not advocate censorship, I would note that the use of the word in that fashion scarcely erases the ugly connotations from our minds.
Because ours is an age in which all warnings of decadence-propelling conduct is thought to be answered by the word "hypocrisy," I hereby confess that my language is not always pure. It doesn't follow that the letter writer was right. The public use of obscenities is a big deal.
Contact Jay Ambrose at AmbroseJ@SHNS.com.
Another Case of Foot-in-Mouth?
Pat Robertson is once again all over the news for comments deemed "radical" by media outlets. The latest Robertson-ism, he claims that divine revelation has shown him that President Bush is going to win a landslide reelection.
"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," Robertson said on his "700 Club" program on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded. "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way." Three questions jump out at me:
(1) Since when do mainstream media personnel watch the 700 Club?
(2) Why is it really news that Robertson said this?
(3) Why does Mr. Robertson need God to tell him of Bush's coming victory, when watching a Democratic presidential debate would say the same thing?
Seriously, I know that Pat Robertson says some pretty brash things at times, and his opinions don't always mirror the consensus of Christian conservatives -- although they probably do more tmies than not (if there is such a thing as a Christian conservative consensus).
--- Friday, January 02, 2004
Thanks but No Thanks
Dennis Prager comments on Iran's refusal of aid from Israel, and how that act is indicative of the Middle East problems at large:
Hundreds of millions of Muslims -- Arab and non-Arab, Sunni and Shi'a -- hate Israel more than they love life. Leaders of the Palestinian terror organization Hamas repeatedly state, "We love death more than the Jews love life." And now, Iran announces that it is better for a Muslim to asphyxiate under the earth than be rescued by a Jew from Israel.
The Reverend Dean?
Does Howard Dean understand the true meaning of Christmas? One might be led to think so, following his interview with the Boston Globe, which ran on Dec. 25. Prepared to now invoke the name of Christ as a way to score points with a key target audience, "Dean said that Jesus was an important influence in his life and that he would probably share with some voters the model Jesus has served for him."
Unfortunately (but unsurprisingly), Dean's version of Jesus is the same washed-out, meaningless icon that has become so prevalent in postmodern society. I don't claim to know or judge the status of Dr. Dean's salvation, but the individual he describes is not the Creator and Lord of the universe. Even the Quran would not quarrel with Dean's portrayal of Jesus.
The truth is, of course, that Jesus was not just a good teacher, the "inclusive" and passive weenie that liberals seem to wish that He was. The Lord Jesus that I worship was a fiery, divisive, and uncompromising rabbi whose words often led His listeners to try and toss Him off a cliff. He was and is the King of Kings, the Lord of Hosts.
Cal Thomas notes: "One hopes that the next journalist who gets a chance to ask Dean about this will inquire as to which Jesus he is talking about, if for no other reason than to gauge whether Dean is being sincere or a political opportunist who seeks to bamboozle Southern religious Democrats."
And Joseph Farah adds: "Jesus Christ did much more than set an example. He came to earth as the Son of God and shed His blood to save mankind. Believing that is what makes one a 'committed believer in Jesus Christ.' Anything short of that represents only the lowest form of political pandering -- the kind Jesus Himself would have judged rather harshly."
Maybe Dr. Dean really does believe in Jesus -- who am I to know? But even the demons believe -- and tremble.
--- Monday, December 29, 2003
An Evil One Revealed
Carl Olson declares the end of Saddam Hussein's potential path to becoming the "Antichrist" predicted in Scripture. Frankly, I've always thought that Saddam was TOO obvious of a choice to actually be the man of sin who would lead the world into devastation during the last days. But he does fit nicely into the schemes of the devil in preparing for the real guy's ascent. It's hard to argue that the world was always a worse place with Saddam in it. And he's probably left his mark in the Middle East more than we yet realize.
Lord of the Racists?
The accusation was thrown at Star Wars I, and now it's being hurled at the Lord of the Rings series. Circa FoxNews.com's Tongue Tied, our worst suspicions are confirmed: LOTR is racist propaganda.
Goes the well thought-out argument at Indymedia:In these times when a homicidal maniac from Texas...has stolen the American throne and called for a "crusade" against the "evil doers" in nations that white people have been invading, terrorizing, raping and pillaging in for 5000 years with zero provocation, I think we could manage some cultural sensitivity in our popular culture which one must acknowledge has a powerful propaganda affect on the general population that participates in it. It's difficult to add to that.
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