The late George Carlin's one-man standup comedy was hilarious. He packed auditoriums (or auditoria, if you prefer) and filled hours of cable TV with his exceptional use of irony and his intellectual grasp of humankind's foibles and frailties.
But he also was devoutly foul-mouthed. Part of his fame on cable TV was reciting the seven words banned by the Federal Communications Commission on network TV as insufferably obscene, and, incidentally, also avoided by most mainstream print publications as painfully offensive.
One was the "F" word.
That apparently was Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's word of choice during telephone calls tapped by the FBI. In quoting Blagojevich's language, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald substituted "bleeping" for what probably was the governor's crude and repeated use of "F - - - - - g."
If Blagojevich sounded like a mobster planning a whack job on a stool pigeon, you're not up with the times.
The "F" word was used on the floor of the decorous U.S. Senate by Vice President Dick Cheney in rebuking a senator. Tough-guy movie characters can't go through a film without a liberal sprinkling of obscenities and vulgarities, especially the "F" word.
Coarse language still can be found in everyday life, although, happily, the widespread presence of women and stringent workplace rules of behavior have tended to subdue spoken filth.
So why not publish and broadcast commonly understood obscenities of a public figure such as Gov. Blagojevich rather that protect his potty mouth with redactions and "bleeps"? Doesn't vulgarity deserve the shame and opprobrium that would ensue?
Over the years, I've wrestled with this dilemma as a journalist.
Wisdom slowly gathered over time, however, tells me that we don't need to add to the ruin of spoken English any more than we have by publishing obscenities willy-nilly. The corrosive influence of so-called street language and hip vernacular has infused television and movies and spread like a virus among the young. Speaking in whole, intelligent sentences without a curse word is an impossible feat for so many today.
Even if swear words and vulgarities are absent, the lost ability to speak is present with the ubiquitous standbys of new speech—"um," "you know," "I mean."
It was at home or from my favorite English teacher, Faith Porch, that I learned something memorable—that using obscenities, vulgarities and swearing reveals a mind too lazy to learn words of beauty and meaning for speaking.
Is this being a fuddy-duddy? Nope, just showing respect for yourself and for the expectations of those around us.
