We’ve lost the battle for “ass.”
When I was a boy, the bad words were, roughly: damn, hell, bastard, bitch, ass, shit, and fuck. (And variants; asshole, shithead, motherfucker, etc.)
There are peripheral additions. There is a very nasty word for female genitalia which I shall not reproduce here, for example. (They’re way down there, but there are some standards here at WmWms.) There is also a word—a synonym of “fellater”—which I shall not reproduce here, but which is one of my favorite people’s ultimate swear words. I mean, that’s what he says when he’s totally unrestrained.
Anyway, damn and hell have been sliding relentlessly into normalcy for my entire adult life, to the point where it even became acceptable for them to appear in sitcoms. Bitch and bastard followed.
Now, ass is coming.
I’ve heard (and corrected) it in my older son’s language twice. I think part of it is its appearance in a commercial that airs during IndyCar races. I suspect the shank of it is coming from a schoolmate, though.
Whatever the case, at this rate, we’re going to need some new swears in five years.
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Hell and damn have always been part of normal words from my upbringing. Hell, the bishop used dammit as punctuation, and his brother, the judge, used hell as punctuation. It was really funny when they were in the same room watching football…
I’m assuming Nathan said something to the effect of “Quit looking at that girl’s ass, Dad!” At least that’s how it happens to me…
LOL BamaDan!
Just to play devil’s advocate, perhaps some of those words have become acceptable not just because of a lowering of our moral standards, but also because they were real words before they became slang. You can find “damn” and “hell” in the Bible. A “bastard” is an illegitimate male child. A “bitch” is a female dog. You can make the same argument for “ass.” It’s a legitimate name for a species of equine mammal.
The line starts to get blurred when otherwise legitmate words get put into a different context, such as using “ass” as another word for buttocks or “cock” (a rooster) as another word for penis or “pussy” (a cat) as another word for vagina.
“Fuck” and “shit” and the “c-word” (and various combinations thereof) will never find their way on to public television, I believe, because they’ve been profane terms from the very beginning.
Rest assured, NONE of these words are acceptable for my almost-5yr old to use!
As a general rule, we try to discourage calling anybody anything deragatory – it just makes life easier if you don’t get in that habit. So, that includes “stupid”, “idiot”, and various other names that you hear regularly on kid t.v. (Wise-cracking teenagers are funny, don’t you know!) Not that they’ve never heard words like “idiot” from us but they are usually reserved for bad drivers and political figures. Even then it’s never a sustained discussion in front of the kids. With the older child, I’ve even explained that even though there really ARE people/kids making questionable decisions that it’s not his place to comment on their mental abilities and doing so to their face would be really rude.
No, in Bo’s defense (even though Bo does appreciate a good ass) the offense was about “kicking ass”. That phrase is becoming almost as pervasive as “Oh, My God!”, which is another thing I wouldn’t have been allowed to say as a kid. I’m pretty sure my parents would have kicked my ass if I’d gone around saying “Oh My God!”.
The funny part is we have become more permissive about cuss words but get so worked up over words perceived as politically incorrect. God forbid we should call someone a “mailMAN” instead of a “mail carrier”. I guess it’s okay to call them a bitch or bastard, though.
Perfect lead-in to one of my favorite jokes:
A 6 year old and a 4 year old are upstairs in their bedroom.
You know what?” says the 6 year old. “I think it’s about time we started cussing.” The 4 year old nods his head in approval.
The 6 year old continues, “When we go downstairs for breakfast, I’m gonna say something with ‘hell’ and you say something with ‘ass’. The 4 year old agrees with enthusiasm.
When their mother walks into the kitchen and asks the 6 year old what he wants for breakfast, he replies, “Aw, hell, Mom, I guess I’ll have some Cheerios.
WHACK! He flies out of his chair, tumbles across the kitchen floor, gets up, and runs upstairs crying his eyes out, with his mother in hot pursuit, slapping his rear with every step. His mom locks him in his room and shouts, “You can just stay there until I let you out!”
She then comes back downstairs, looks at the 4 year old and asks with a stern voice, “And what do YOU want for breakfast, young man?”
“I don’t know” he blubbers, “but you can bet your fat ass it won’t be Cheerios.”
I would never drop the F-bomb in public and hell is the worst word I would ever use around a colleague. But sometimes yelling “FUUUUCK!!!!” is good, cheap therapy. As long as I do it at home or alone in my car… Now there’s even evidence that cursing when you hurt yourself actually relieves pain.
Mindlessly tossing profanity into speech just makes a person appear to have a poor grasp of language and incapable of original thought. Using it in the middle of a word – absofuckinglutely – doesn’t make the word more emphatic.
Interesting discussion. Bo, I guess you’ve never watched the “Deadwood” series on HBO? I really enjoyed the show after I became inured to the cursing. Heck, by the end of the season that “fellator” word almost seemed acceptable.
We really threw the F-word around a lot when I was in the Army especially WTF. I’ve also heard anecdotally that Sailors like to curse too. I remember some times when I’d come home on leave to visit my parents and absentmindedly drop the F word. I wouldn’t even think about it until I saw the reaction on my parent’s faces and then I’d feel ashamed.
Since I retired and rejoined the civilian world I almost never cuss. I guess it’s all about environment.