Swear Like There's Salvation in the Words Themselves: (Adult Content Warning)

Profanity is in the news. (expletive deleted) I'm a huge fan. People who know me well, and some who barely know me, know you don't want your kids around me. It seems poor Rex Ryan, the coach of the Jets, is in the same boat. (Be patient, sports loathers, this is only an analogy, not the topic.) I love HBO's Hard Knocks. It is perhaps the best sports program available on television. Every year, HBO goes to training camp with an NFL team, films practices, meetings, cuts, contracts, personal anecdotes, slice of life vignettes, pre-season games, etc. It's great television. Year one was Dallas. Year two, the Bengals. Neither coach is ever likely to yell. They certainly aren't going to do much swearing. However, Rex Ryan...oh...a man after my own heart. In week one, he dropped dozens of f-bombs, gds, shits, damns, and some combo swears. It reminded me of, well, of football.

The news the next day was that Rex apologized to his mother because she was upset about his coarse language. Fine. I get it. I don't talk that way in front of my mom either, mostly. But then it became the news de jour. With only baseball going on right now, and with the 32 fans remaining who actually give a shit about the most boring sport since the pro bowlers tour, any football news usurps the lead story spot on all sports networks, even news that isn't really news. Like Rex Ryan saying of his missing safety, "Well, goddamn, he's pretty fucking good." And then Dan Patrick had to go and ask Tony "Is My Halo Straight?" Dungy what he thought about it.

Here we go. Ask the most outspoken evangelical in football since Kurt Warner what he thinks about cussing. Great idea, Dan. I wonder what he'll say. "Well, shit, Dan, I don't know what to fuckin' make of this. I like profanity like I like blowjobs." Yeah, not likely. He said something to the effect of, "I wouldn't hire someone who talked like that." Convenient. Good thing you're not running a war, Saint Tony. The lie here, and I heard some ex-players say it, is that this is not news. Football coaches swear. Players swear. Dungy might even drop a quiet one occasionally. Dear parents, when we were in high school, our coaches used horrifically colorful, crass language, and we simply didn't tell you. Of course, my father played sports in high school, too, so he'd have been shocked if my coach had led us in prayer rather than tell us to kick some fuckin' ass. And when he did, we yelled like Vikings or Thunderbirds or Celtics or Chieftains with the blood lust on us. We did not go home and tell mom how uncomfortable we were with Coach Sago's language. Nope. Not once.

I've had a long and happy relationship with swearing. I lived in Maud, Oklahoma, when I was in 3rd grade. My dad was overseas. Something about a war. A polite war though. No swearing. I ruled at kickball. We were playing one day, and someone on the other team cheated. I let loose with the longest string of profanity I'd ever used. Not sure if I've ever topped it. A strange desire to make public my fascination with the words my Pentecostal heritage had denied me took hold of me. The effect on my fellow students was immediate. Shock. Horror. Admiration. Fear. Laughter. Even a little mimicry. I landed in the principal's office, of course. He explained why that wasn't appropriate. Paddled my ass. Sent me home with a note. Pentecostal mom wasn't happy about it, but I didn't get any more swats. I've been swearing pretty much ever since.

Even when I was a Christian I had a difficult time understanding the aversion to swearing. Some of the best Bible stories featured it. Unfortunately, the translators chose euphemisms rather than coarse language. When Elijah mocks the prophets of Baal, he is not using polite euphemisms. Alas. It's long lost to Bible people. They think Paul is talking about profanity when he speaks of coarse language or corrupt communication, so they feel free to slander other Christians or atheists or politicians or their leaders, people for whom they are supposed to be praying. But instead of using the redemptive words of prayer, they use the lies of political machination: socialist, fascist, philanderer, radical, antichrist, Muslim... They believe taking the Lord's name in vain is about saying goddamn or Jesus Christ as an expletive. They consistently take the Lord's name in vain by acting like douchebags and telling everyone it's because God has called them to do or say or believe something with such conviction that kindness, meekness, and temperance are subsumed under the rubric of "you can be a dick; just be right." Hypocrites. They assume that gossip and slander said without profanity are somehow justified, but tell the truth with a fuck in the middle of it, and you've sinned mightily. Hypocrites. They repeat the lies and spin of their favorite pundits with no regard for fact checking themselves, and castigate a football coach for saying fuck. Hypocrites.

It's a word. Its meaning is culturally defined. Its status as profanity, culturally defined. The very definition of profanity, culturally defined. It has only the power you give it. It was a lesson we taught the parish teen when she was six or seven, maybe eight. Her then stepmother used it regularly. It traumatized the child. One night before a Christmas concert at Oklahoma City University, we sat in a dark car in the parking lot of the school and made the child repeat the word over and over, at first through her tears. Made her use it in a sentence. Made her shout it. Made her laugh when she said it. Made her say, "Fuck you!" to me. Made her break the taboo, conquer the fear, and demystify the word. It's a word, a goddamn word. Get over it. Seriously. Then we told her to be careful when and how she used it. We had to tell her that certain people will think differently of her if she uses it in front of them. She has a mouth to rival mine now, but you wouldn't know it if you met her in public. That's because we told her some people are so deluded that they believe recourse to profanity is a sign of ignorance or a weak mind, which is ironic, since it seems fear, loathing or offense at profanity would be the sign of a weak mind. Anyway, she's a friend of the language now, too, and she uses it well. And appropriately, and oh yes, there is such a thing.

Still, because I don't want to be a dick, even though I believe I'm right, if you ask me not to talk that way in front of you, I'll respect your wishes, to the degree that I won't swear consciously. As I discovered tonight, habits are hard to break, but I did cut down on my swearing in front of friends who are offended by goddamn. Rex Ryan did better in week two as well. I'm sure your mom is proud, Rex. When you know she's not watching, cuss like salvation is in the words themselves, friend.

Comments

[stephy]

Paul used the word 'shit' (scubula) when he wrote "I count all things as loss...." It's always politely translated to "loss" because they're pussies.

[stephy]

P.S. I used to live in Enid.

[Slim Wirth]

When I was a pre-school little lad, I would ride my little bike around the neighborhood with my little necktie tied squarely around my neck and my little bible securing resting in the arms of the basket on the front of my bicycle along with my little communion set. I would pass judgment on all I surveyed and I found it all without redemption in the eyes of God for whom my eyes were His able and capable servants.

The biggest problem that God and I had in my neighborhood was a Catholic family who lived across the alley with a very large brood of highly heathenistic male children who ran unsupervised and unwashed around their yard and the adjoining vacant lot. These heathen didn't even wear shirts much less neckties and they reminded me of the band of monkeys in the zoo. One day I parked out in the street and surveyed this horror as they began their normal discourse by strutting around and cursing like little sailors as they mocked me and the God I served. As we were in the yule season, I tried to save them by pointing out that they couldn't possibly hope for a visit from St. Nicholas and with that, they began to howl, swing from the trees and throw what must have undoubtedly been their own feces - although I'm not completely sure on that last point. In my Christlike demeanor, I defended the way and the truth and the life of Saint Claus, but the more I preached, the more the monkeys cursed and vain-fully strutted around their "cage".

Proud of the courage of my missionary appeal and conviction, I went home and reported to my sainted mother the latest apostasy of the "Catholics". My mother paused and then said, "Well, sweetie, there is no Santa Claus".

Well, I'll just be goddamned. Not only were those goddamned Catholics completely right, they had made a total fucking jackass out of me. That day, I took off my necktie and my little white shirt and spent the rest of the summer strutting around like a little sailor with my new friends. The next Sunday, I went to Sunday school, and the teacher started telling a story about how Jesus feed five thousand with two fish and five loaves. On that Sunday, I proudly and loudly proclaimed to the teacher, "That's bullshit, and you know it." My mother washed my mouth out with soap that Sunday afternoon, but I didn't care, I had been set free and when I told my friends across the alley about it, a couple of them were a little hesitant about where the line was drawn and I howled like a little monkey.

[Jessica Campbell]

well put. this has been a huge beef of mine since freshman year of college. Constantly frustrated that I could get fined $25 / curse word yet those who spread untrue rumors or even true rumors around the school got put on "who's who" and elected as homecoming queen.

ps. I got a pink slip in 1st grade for calling a kid a son of a bitch. I felt it was justified b/c he had stomped on a mother craw-dad and its babies. Neither the girls who told on me, the teacher who gave me the pink slip, nor my mother who washed my mouth out with soap for a week agreed. I still think I was right. And it just goes to show you how valuable corporal punishment is.

[Mike McVey]

"Year one was Dallas. Year two, the Bengals."

One small correction. Hard Knocks is in its seventh season and fourth consecutive since 2007.

[Greg Horton]

Mike, should have been clearer. It's only the third season I've watched

Sent from my iPhone

[Rolyatl]

I'm right there with ya, brother...my dad -was- the football coach! Funny thing is, our girls basketball coach (who also assisted with football along side my dad) did not swear at us. In fact, during my senior year, in the midst of an exceptionally rough basketball game, I let out a goddammit that the ref heard and then promptly told my coach, who then benched me immediately and took away my starting position for the rest of the season!

[Rodney]

Cursing is part of the natural evolution of language, an organic and necessary extension of the advanced communication that our species enjoys. Curse words/salty language/profanities are a necessary part of any dialect and to deny them a place in our vocabulary is to deny ourselves a rich history of linguistic evolution.

If you want to talk about language that's an abomination to every tongue that's ever uttered a syllable, let's talk about this Christianese bullshit. Broken metaphors; gauzy, ethereal, non-specific terminology; and an almost complete reliance upon nonsensical absurdity. I just pulled up one email from a main offender I know and see phrases like "reloading our spiritual fuel," "outpouring of our discipleship," "deeply soaked in the Word of God" (I won't even comment on the strange fascination with fluid-based analogies). Now, that's some fucking bad language.

[Rolyatl]

also, it seems that i have this random piece of trivia stuck in my head...that the work fuck is actually an acronym used back in the day of locking people in stocks for having sex out of wedlock, and they'd paint the letters of their 'crime' on the stocks: For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. or i might have just made that up?

[dr dobson]

Aside from that being also the name of a kick-ass Van Halen album, I've also heard that the acronym represents the phrase, "fornication under consent of the King" due to the fact that the crown attempted to tax prostitution way back when. I haven't wasted my time in England verifying this, however.

I just had a great t-shirt idea: Perhaps we could start a list of such acronyms, print them on a t-shirt, sell them to fund something, say, a DVD about it. We could simply give the DVDs away--it would be a huge hit and lead, undoubtedly, to the demise of fucking.

Did I just combine the topics of recent posts? I think I did . . .

[Leighton]

Oxford English Dictionary is agnostic on the etymology of "fuck," but my favorite is this citation from 1536:
Ay fukkand lyke ane furious Fornicatour.

[dr dobson]

I heard somewhere that Friends University of Central Kansas has a great student relations department.

[Rolyatl]

Wikipedia offers: Some of these urban legends are that the word fuck came from Irish law. If a couple were caught committing adultery, they would be punished "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge In the Nude", with "FUCKIN" written on the stocks above them to denote the crime. Another theory is that of a royal permission. During the Black Death in the Middle Ages, towns were trying to control populations and their interactions. Since uncontaminated resources were scarce, many towns required permission to have children. Hence, the legend goes, that couples that were having children were required to first obtain royal permission (usually from a local magistrate or lord) and then place a sign somewhere visible from the road in their home that said "Fornicating Under Consent of King", which was later shortened to "FUCK". This story is hard to document but has persisted in oral and literary traditions for many years; however, it has been demonstrated to be an urban legend.

fuckin urban legends...:)

[dr dobson]

. . . yes, one must be suspicious of those nasty, oral traditions . . .

Someone stop me, please.

[True Religion Jeans Outlet]

The way I'd do it would be to peel and quarter three apples (1 granny Smith to hold its shape and two others) and place in a saucepan over medium heat. Add a little apple juice concentrate (or brown sugar if you want), 1 tsp. cinnamon, a dash of mace and nutmeg, a pinch of salt, and about 2 tsp. lemon juice. Cook over medium-low heat until the apples are cooked through but retain some of the shape. Remove half the apples and puree and return to the chunky ones. Yummy!