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Oh, for fuck's sake, Joanie, just come out and say the word
By adamg on Sun, 04/04/2010 - 9:29am
Joan Vennochi got a case of the vapors writing today's column, the point of which seems to be that Joe Biden should be ashamed of himself for saying "fucking" and that college students should not say "fuck" in job interviews. Only, of course, Joan couldn't actually say "fuck" herself, even if the Globe would let her, because polite ladies never say such words, and so she had to resort to a string of fucking euphemisms.
Also, it's apparently OK now to wear flip flops to the White House.
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Comments
3 and 1
3 "fuck"s and 1 "fucking" in a three sentence post. Well done!
It's you against the world, Joan.
Stand-out sentence of the article:
You are much more likely to hear the “f’’ word than the “n’’ word in a public place.
Uh, unless you are actively in the process of tightening your corset strings or raising your lorngette, I'd wager it's LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to live in modern America and look at that sentence without thinking: "No fucking shit."
Speaking of the "n" word
The Outraged Liberal wonders why Vennochi seems more upset by the use of the "f" word than the "n" word.
F versus N
One is an overused interjection, sometimes aimed at a specific person. The other is ALWAYS a slur with the weight of terrible history behind it.
Her inability to see that difference, or to be more offended by a salty interjection rather than a demeaning slur is a classic faulty equivalence borne of privilege.
Anyone got her e-mail?
Somebody should send her the reduced version of The Departed. She'll go into a coma, and not bother us anymore with this tripe.
I read to the bottom of her column so you don't have to
[email protected]
E-mail at bottom
I actually had read to the bottom. It wasn't there.
What I had to do was upgrade to the next incarnation of Firefox so it would render properly and not cut off the bottom of the frame or whatever the
hellFUCK was happening before.A link to This jewel of a synopsis is headed to her inbox right now!
So close!
Hah! That YouTube URL has "duck" in it.
Fuck fuck fuck a duck
Screw a kangaroo
Fingerbang an orangutan
At your local zoo.
My iPhone insists on changing "fuck" to "duck." Every single time.
Not every "single" time
Every DUCKIN' time.
The word's already lost a lot
The word's already lost a lot of its punch, and the more it's thrown around casually, the more its strength will wane. Language should evolve naturally. Heck, "sucks" has already reached that point. Or, to put it in your terms, Joan, the F word, the G word and the R word don't mean what they used to mean, and that's good.
We need more taboo words
This whole dancing-around-the-issue of calling curse words "the [letter] word" so as not to actually use the word when you are just discussing the word (as if that's the same as using it in defined meaning instead) is stupid.
We need MORE taboo words so that the whole alphabet has at least 1 example per letter and then a few of the more confusing ones should be multiple curses per letter.
"Don't say the F word!" "Which F word? Fuck?" "No, the other one!" "Francis?" "No! F word number 26!" "OOOooh, falafel...my bad"
Belgium!
Belgium!
And, Kaz? My kids, who can't seem to figure out any logical reason to have taboo words at all are way ahead of you on the alphabet thing. They even created a kid's song about all the words you can't use! I have a lot of trouble explaining why they shouldn't say those words either, other than having to consider sensitivities of others.
Then again, my mother once boasted that I could use "fuck" as every part of speech.
All about context!
One of my fondest memories of working in a supported apartment program for adults with mental illness was when we were working with this big mook of a guy who liked to swear like a sailor. No biggie, he was an adult, but he would frequently get his ass kicked for telling people to fuck off and the like, so we had to address this to keep him safe.
So we're sitting there at the treatment-planning meeting (f-bomb man had chosen not to participate) with me and a couple high-ups, and we're discussing how it's this guy's right to say fuck if he wants to, and swearing all over the place seemed to be a sociocultural thing for this guy. We ended up coming up with a strategy where we would teach him that saying something like "that's fucked up" is going to result in fewer assaults than saying "fuck you" in the same situation. And yes, we wrote out all of these examples in the dude's treatment plan.
If I may get in on this...
Before this discussion gets away from us, I'd like be the first to say cunt. Just wanted to get that in there. Still packs a wallop with a lot of people, but the Brits drop it on the regular. So, yeah. Cunt. (Joan would be infuriated if you ever called her a cunt, I'd imagine.)
Cunty cunt cunt.
Swearing versus Name Calling
Much different to say "this IS a FUCKING big deal" than to say "fuck you". Similarly, it is different to say "goddamn CUNT!" than to say "okay all you cunts, let's drink!".
Swearing:
A cheap way to sound tough, cynical, cool, rebellious, or a little bit threatening. I do it as much as anyone, which doesn't mean I think it's good. It's a bit like drinking in its self-indulgent quality. It's also a way to get more attention for your statements than they would otherwise merit, a sort of linguistic cheating. Particularly ugly when used around, or used by, little kids.
But Vennocchi's line about the N-word was foolish, and it seems like this type of column has been written every six months or so for the past 50 years.
So what you folks are saying
So what you folks are saying is, is that "Fuck" and "Cunt" are perfectly fine in business correspondence, etc? I mean, given that I'm a girl and everything, if I call another girl a "cunt" in a business memo, that won't constitute a Hatred Jit against me? If I say "fuck" (which I would never do, unlike eeka; guess she's Union) in front of our clients (could I please use the term "Retard," "'Tard" or "Handicapped" without being cited by my org's HR dept?), I shouldn't be punished if an Innernational Outsource gets offended? (And, get over yerselves, The State Under Contract Has to Deal Wi' Dat Shit ' N All.)
I understand that everyone's rebelling against their parents here and all, but, come on.
Nah
Speaking for myself, my problem is a Globe columnist realizing 15 minutes before deadline she has nothing to write about, so pulls out some chestnut that would have been old two decades ago about something that happened two weeks ago and feigns offense and in the process manages to come off as some sort of yahoo who thinks a misplaced "fuck" or "goddamn" is more worthy of notice than congressmen getting spit at and cursed at because of their race or a president ripping the Constitution to shreds in the 1970s. It was a stupid, pointless column of the sort we usually only see from Margery Eagan.
newsworthy?
Um Adam, I believe the congressmen supposedly getting spit at and cursed at got plenty of notice. I am assuming that you refer to the recent HCR vote?
--Regards,
John
Never happened
The former never happened and I don't believe the latter happened, either.
The "spitting" was a "say it, don't spray it" situation, and with the zillions of cameras going, nobody turned up with any racial slurs.
But back to the main topic, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5cI-XovkbM
Who you gonna believe?
Me or your own lying eyes?
The spitting or non-spitting happens at about 1:25 in this video. Later on, you can see Cleaver wipe the spit glob off his face. You'll also note that Cleaver comes back out at about 2:37 with a police officer to identify the man who spat or didn't spit on him (who hides his face). Later (not on video), the man was detained by police, in handcuffs, and was let go when Cleaver didn't identify him. His spokesperson Mary Petrovic said it's not that Cleaver couldn't identify the suspect. It's that he wouldn't identify the suspect, because the police would have been "obligated" to make an arrest, which he didn't want.
Textbook Teabagging
Of course Dave doesn't think it happened. That would mean believing established fact over his truthy dream universe. See also "Texas textbook revisionist history".
Next up, Dave will explain why the N- word really isn't bad because it was an affectionate term that benevolent slaveholders used, too.
Judge for yourself
Look around :18 and :34:
Exactly...
Just as I said, a "say it, don't spray it" moment.
But you guys are going to stick with the "was spat on" story even though Rep. Cleaver never claimed it.
Untrue
Rep. Cleaver did state he'd been spat upon. He stated so to the police, and the police detained a man who may have been the perpetrator. Rep. Cleaver, a former minister, then turned the other cheek and forgave the offender, refusing to identify him or press charges and thus allowing the police to release him.
But people like you wouldn't understand turning the other cheek, would you?
Really, Dave? Really?
Because screaming so hard, through cupped hands from less than 6 inches from a man's face, to the point that you can't control gobs of your own saliva from escaping all over him...because THAT is a defensible, civilized action in society?
You REALLY want to defend that guy as being "better than someone who would actually spit on a man"?
My, my, how the moral and civil high ground has eroded beneath you.
Dave is playing politics
stating it wasn't a explicit racist slur, therefore it wasn't racist, therefore it was acceptable.
playing politics
"Imagine [insert left-wing activist group here] getting a serious profile in a mainstream newspaper, and imagine serious Democratic politicians appearing at their convention."
The problem is, when I really evaluated what the various far-left activist groups are all about and compared them with the tea party movement, there really wasn't any equivalency. At all.
Because when you strip away all of the rage, all of the nonsensical loud noises and all of the contradictions, all that's left is race. The tea party is almost entirely about race, and there's no comparative group on the left that's similarly motivated by bigotry, ignorance and racial hatred. The Tea Party Is All About Race
Reading for content
Where did eeka say she said "fuck" in front of a client?
*gasp* you said "girl"
I can't believe you went and referred to a female businessperson as a "girl!" To the P.C. crowd, that's more offensive than calling her "motherfuckincuntweasel."
Vapors
Also, vapors = farts.
Talk about head exploding
Classic scene from The Wire: How to do an entire scene with nothing but iterations of Fuck.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN5eYFH8HZ8
Wow.
Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.