THE
WORD
I was there, live and in person, when “golly” surrendered, without a shot, to “OMG.” Oh, My God.
Likewise, when “Geez” transformed into “Jesus H. Christ.”
Darn it, after that, “heck” didn’t have a chance. “Damn” and “hell” reigned supreme for quite a season.
Then people stopped referring to the “butt of a joke” and screamed at you to “get off your ass.”
Time passed.
It seemed like “give a shit” would hang around, but the times, they are a’changin’.
Here comes “what the fuck.”
“Fuck” is like an old friend who got lost in the wilderness but came back into the house, was ready to sleep on the sofa and willing to throw in a few bucks for pizza.
It stuck closer than a brother.
It became a noun, an adjective, a verb, an interjection—and I do believe I have even heard it used, from time to time, as an adverb: (“…he said fuckily…”)
This disturbs many people, who yearn for the time when language was carefully watched by censoring forces who desired that anything untoward would not cross the ears of young children, or even mature adults.
We most certainly know that Rhett Butler would never say, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” if he was able to let Scarlett know that he didn’t “give a fuck.”
It is not the profanity of f-u-c-k that makes it particularly nasty. Although overused, it is not the foulness of the word that creates a problem. It’s just that on the journey from “golly” to “fuck” we got angrier.
We’re not using the language to be clever or cute. We’re using the word because we’re more pissed off than we used to be.
We even tease with a friendly “fuck” to remind people that just beneath the surface is a bubbling oil, ready to spill out and burn anyone in sight if they dare cross our path.
It would be absolutely fine if we could “fuck this, fuck that” and “fuck the other” if it was accompanied by a smile instead of gritting teeth.
It may be necessary to back off the language just to give us the chance to regain some civility. Because you can tell me I’m dumb all day long and I may not like it, but if you tell me to go fuck myself, we’re at war.
So let us not be childish.
First, let’s not be Puritans, pretending that language can be controlled and taken back to an 1853 purity.
But also, let’s not be so idiotic as to assume that the rampant use of more and more “fucks” in our society does not mean that we’ve lost control and no longer have the ability to deal rationally with each other, without tempers flaring.
So the F word is “fuck”
This is not because it’s particularly profane, but because it is a precursor to violent behavior.
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly donation for this inspirational opportunity
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