How can you connect contemporary culture with conservative values without profanity? Are we being prudes to our own detriment, and the defeat of our own message? But if we wrap our societal medicine in a digestible patina of ‘adult language’ do we undercut that very message? Does it even matter?
Bill Whittle and Alfonzo Rachel unpack the morality of today’s news, culture and entertainment twice each week on The Virtue Signal. When you become a Member, you help create these messages. You also tap a deep archive of conservative content, and join a community of like-minded patriots with their own blog and forums. Click the big green button above. (If you’re not a joiner, you can make a one-time or recurring donation with credit card or PayPal using the blue button above. Either way, thank you.
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37 replies on “The Curse of Profanity: Can Any Idea Connect with This Culture without ‘Adult Language’”
I get you, Bill. I work in a distribution center with a bunch of men and we all curse here. I do my best to get it under control but I slip when I want to keep others at arms reach, but within reach of my words. Sadly. I admit.
I tell my children that curse words are used by those who don’t have a vocabulary to Express themselves better. Cursing is the supplement for weak vocabularies.
We can do better.
Since Biden & Dems have been elected I’ve been using profanity a lot while watching the news.
The word “F” is purely jarring and offensive to me, but even worse is “mother F”. Dammit, S$%# and crap somehow do not effect me in the same way, although I rarely use them. Why is this? I am not sure, but I am sure the “mother F” is something that should never be used, in any context, with it’s reference to motherhood. To me, this is out of bounds.
I recall something my dad taught me, over 55 years ago now.
Sometimes profanity is appropriate, because there are no other words that accurately express the thought you are trying to convey. But those times are extremely rare.
The vast majority of the time, using profanity only announces to everyone around you that your mastery of your native language isn’t sufficient for you to speak without it.
There is a joke he was fond of using as an example.
A Baptist preacher had an old classic car, a gift from his father before his father passed away. He had had the car for many years, and had babied it and taken care of it and kept it in perfect condition.
Until one Sunday, driving home from church, when a little child ran out in front of him. Of course he braked hard to avoid hitting the child, and when he did a man behind him rear-ended him.
He got out of the car and went around back to look. The damage wasn’t all that bad, but this was his baby. Besides, it was a classic, an antique, there was no way he was going to be able to get the parts. He wanted to scream and curse so badly he could almost taste it.
But he was a Baptist preacher. He had never cursed in his life. He had lived by that principle. He couldn’t break it now, especially on a Sunday, on his way home from church.
Finally in desperation, he marched back to the car behind him, shook his finger in the driver’s face and shouted, “I hope when you get home, your mother runs out from under the porch and bites you!“
I have noticed that the most used invectives when under stress, duress, or pain have universal characteristics. It’s not a coincidence that what is most commonly considered profanity follows the same pattern. Ready? Here it is:
The pattern is one syllable: fricative/vowel/plosive. That’s all. Sometimes you’ll see the pattern inverted into plosive/vowel/fricative.
Think about it. The first consonant: \f\, \s\, \sh\, \ch\, \gh\, etc. The last consonant, \t\, \k\, \q\, \d\, \g\, etc. Stick an open vowel in between, to build to the final consonant.
I never [what, never? hardly ever…] use ‘actual’ profanity. I use made up, nonsense, or common words that follow the pattern. (Or Klingon: its invented invectives nearly universally follow the pattern with multisyllabic flair. Marc Okrand knew what he was doing!)
Not just non-offensive to others, but fun! Be careful, though: a random combination may result in accidental actual profanity.
Years ago I was preparing an out of hours, adults only, tour telling stories from the 17th and 18th centuries which you simply couldn’t tell during the daytime with kids around. In the tour we quoted poetry by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, which included the f-bomb and worse. We had talked about whether we should go the whole way, as it were.
I was discussing this with the late Brian Sewell, art critic and broadcaster. He said to me “Be bold dear boy! Be bold! If you’re going to say f*** then do it clearly, enunciate it, own it. Don’t just use it casually, as punctuation like these slobs like (he named a famous modern artist) do.”.
I think that’s the point, overuse of anything diminishes it. I’ve noticed how infrequently Bill and Steve are driven to bad language, that being the case, when they do, you know they’re really riled up. Scott of course doesn’t use it at all. If he ever does drop a curse word I’m gonna hide under the table.
Personally I feel it’s a “time and a place” thing. In a pub, at night, with my mates is different from giving a radio interview or a speech at a wedding.
There are studies showing that cursing increased the subjects’ pain tolerance, while using fake curses did not help. Search on “study on cursing pain”.
When considering whether to hire a contractor for a job or do it myself, my wife and I carefully consider “the cuss factor”. By the way, profanity does nothing to improve the outcome of construction, building a fence or planting trees. I know this from experience.
I rarely use profanity, mainly I just don’t like it (and when I was a teen it made me unique because the profanity used at my middle school alone would draw an NC-17 rating, and I liked being different), and I like to save it for when I “really need it.” Casual conversation, don’t use it, if I’m getting frustrated I might say “d**n” and other “softer words, but when I start say “f**k” and other hard words, you know that I am REALLY angry and am 1 step away from starting a fist fight. I know sailor mouths, and when they swear when angry it just doesn’t hold the same power.
As for “how do I write ‘authentic experiences’ without profanity,” the answer is in the question, write the authentic experience without the profanity. Like, once one says “I’m going to deliver the same level of expression without profanity” and commits to it, it’s really not that noticeable. Doug Walker basically built the Nostalgia Critic character around profanity laden rants about movie scenes, and then day he just stopped saying “f***” constantly in his reviews and no one really noticed for a year until it was brought up as a joke in an end of the year review (I think the set-up was “Nostalgia Critic was talking about how far he’s come from the beginning, one of the side characters says something like ‘f*** that’s wild,’ NC says ‘that’s the first time we’ve said that this year,’ the side character says ‘really?’ NC says ‘yeah, we went a whole year without saying it'”). No one really noticed because he gave the same level of anger and sarcasm that he did with the profanity but just didn’t say naughty words.
Now for the “but how do I WRITE it? golly gee doesn’t have the same kick.” The answer to that is “don’t use kid swears, just use inflection and maybe raw yelling.” Think of the tribal fight scene in Ace Ventura When Nature Calls and Ace is stabbed in the leg with a spear, and then another spear. The scene wouldn’t be any funnier or more powerful if Ace was yelling “FFFFFUUUUUUUU” instead of “AAAAAAAHHHHHHH,” because it’s all in how Jim Carrey emoted that feeling, with his leg prominently out and him looking at it and yelling, and then doing the same exact thing when the 2nd spear is thrown into his other leg. Another example is Gambit in The Dark Knight (the gangster where Joker does the magic trick with the pencil and tells the story of how he got the scars). At no point in any of the dialog of those scenes (or the entire movie) was any profanity used, but you might think that it was because of how well those scenes are crafted to give you that feeling of edge. And it’s not like Dark Knight was “a church movie that didn’t connect with the profane edge lords,” because Heath Ledger’s Joker was “the edge lord’s joker” until Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. A good artist can make you feel the “power of profanity” without actually using profanity.
Bill I hope you see this because I’m pretty sure this is the answer to your question of “how do I reach the profane masses without using profanity.”
I’m in my 70’s. I only heard my father utter the f-bomb twice in my life. I remember both times vividly. Curse words should be used sparingly. Otherwise, they lose their effect. And that’s what we see today.
My brother got a new job where he is constantly around construction workers. His speech is now beyond offensive. He has three nephews, my grandkids, and we are to the point that we have to coach him whenever they are around to “tone it down”.
There are times where, at least in my world, cursing has its place. But not around kids. In most cases, especially with “comedy”, it is truly just plain laziness. There are much more appropriate words available if we would bother to learn them.
That said, I f**#!%^^@* disdain the mainstream media and the Dems!!!!!!
We’ve all let loose a word bomb here and there. But when its used in normal everyday conversation, I find it less than creative and basically ignorant. There are a ton of adjectives out there that one can use to describe something. I’m all for using Shakespearean insults when you need to go negative – more amusing and to the point.
https://www.invaluable.com/blog/shakespearean-insults/
Bill:
You farging bastidge! You lousy corksuckers have wiolated my farging rights!
Roman Maroni was possibly the greatest example of swearing without cursing in modern cinema! He absolutely steals that movie.
Of course, like so many films, ‘Johnny Dangerously’ could NEVER be made today…
What a bunch of forking ice holes!
I grew up in NYC in an Italian Catholic family. There were many adjectives used that my parents would say are just gerunds that need to be used sparingly, but acceptably when used correctly. Usually after middle school one grows out of it, by 15 or so.
My grandfather came to the US in 1924 at 18 years old. He got a job pushing clothing carts up and down the avenues for dress makers. Eventually, he opened his own shop making haute couture for name labels. His shop was in Hell’s Kitchen (in a building that is now $1M condos). He was well acquainted with wise guys whom he tipped regularly and was never bothered by petty criminals due to his “friendships”.
Sometime after college, he and I were watching Goodfellas on cable. During one particularly profane scene, he got a very pained expression on his face. Being in his late 80s I inquired if he was OK. His response has always floored me.
“They didn’t talk like that” he said. “They were always polite and treated me like a gentleman. I never heard any of them use that type of language. Maybe they did in private, but not in public. It was a different time. People were always polite.”
I think that is when I truly started to pay attention to how I speak. I don’t curse much, when I do it is to make a point. I rarely raise my voice for that matter. The few times I have makes it much more pointed.
What you’re calling profanity is just a part of speech. Mostly. There are things even I won’t say in polite company and I have a Marine Corps Vocabulary.
However, like all parts of speech, it loses its meaning and impact when overused. As Bill and Zo were saying, using it frivally. That’s the situation we find ourselves in today, years down the road from where “polite company” was a clear and known entity that any decent person would take into account when speaking.
Here’s a non-profane example that illustrates that point —
The Left now calls everyone that they don’t like “racist” or “white supremacist”. This worked in the distant past because no one wanted to be called that except the people who actually are those things. They considered that complimentary where the rest of us were offended and tried earnestly to not be those things.
Today, when the Left calls Winsome Sears, the first black woman to ever hold a major public office in the former slave state of Virginia — A “white supremacist” — It’s clear that phrase doesn’t mean what they think it means.
Those words no longer mean anything but “I don’t like you.”
Salty language is just that, it’s seasoning. Used very sparingly and in compliment to the context it adds depth and nuance to convey a meaning or thought. When poured on with a shovel it makes the “dish” inedible and indigestible.
When I use any sort of “profanity” I’m saying exactly what I mean and mean exactly what I’m saying. People that drop “F-bombs” with every other word are polluting the whole concept of language as a means of expressing an idea.
While it may be cheap and/or lazy, it’s equally null and ineffective at transmitting any idea worth expressing.
Deleted.
Guys,
I got to about 8:40 in this program before I decided to send this note I’ve wanted to send for a while. It has to do with all the video’s produced by BW.com, but primarily Right-Angle.
First let me say that I enjoy you videos and their content; I am also a former construction worker and a retired police officer; I’ve heard (and used) profanities; I’m no prude… That having been said, I also wish to share your videos with my family (my wife and 13-year old). Unfortunately, I am unable to do so without trepidation.
I understand the urge to use some profanity; really I do; but, can we leave it off the video’s, or bleep it, so that they are family friendly?
Your content is important; it should be heard! You have the ability to edit, I don’t. I can’t in good conscience share with my family…
These guys may be the most conscientious I have ever heard about not using profanity. Certainly Scott never does, and Steve and Bill need to be really ticked and then they almost always have it bleeped. The only thing I think I have heard get through is an occasional damn. If there is a video that you think has profanity, you should notify Scott through the forum because that just means it got missed, likely due to the rarity of the event.
I read your comment and I thought “Wow, I must have missed something if there’s profanity unfit for women and teenage children in this video.”
That can happen in a general sense, absolutely. I usually am doing other things while I’m listening to this stuff and it would not surprise me in the least if I missed something.
So I listened, carefully, to the entire video again. Which turned out to be a waste of my time.
There’s no actual profanity in this video. There are allusions to profanity and there are placeholders for profanity necessary to express the point being made in the video. But anything any reasonable, average person of any of the last 5 or more decades would consider a “dirty word” was not to be found.
Talking about profanity without using actual profanity is not profanity in itself. That’s the dividing line I’m using when I say “reasonable, average person”.
I understand, your standards are probably higher than mine and your bar for what you consider “fit for your wife and 13 year old daughter” is probably pretty high.
Even with that in mind, I can’t find anything in this video that would reasonably be expected to have a negative effect on an adolescent girl or a full grown woman.
So if you’re going to make the claim that you couldn’t even watch this video past the 8:40 timestamp you’re going to have to be a little more specific about what you consider profanity and what it is that you want this website to avoid doing. Especially since you claim this is such a common thing in the videos on this site that you can’t share them, or most of them, either.
Because what you’re saying, in so far as you have said it, doesn’t seem to be making any sense.
I’m very interested to hear your views on this matter, so don’t get me wrong. I’m not slagging on you, I’m not trolling you, I’m not picking on you. You are absolutely well within your rights in how and what you want your family exposed to and I fully support you in that, even if it turns out that once I understand you I don’t agree with you. Which I think is likely but I’d still like to try to understand where you’re coming from.
Before you reply, if you choose to do so, bear in mind that I’m always going to take the position that it’s unreasonable to hold someone to higher or more stringent standards than what the rest of us, who mind our speech in polite company and around children, would consider appropriate. I’m telling you this now to avoid the impression I’m trying to trick or goad you into some sort of answer that I’m planning on ambushing you over.
That is not my intent.
If you don’t find something appropriate that’s your call, it’s fine with me and I fully support your decision in that sort of thing. It’s not your call to impose that on everyone else. That would be on you, not on BillWhittle.com and you must decide how you personally want to proceed with that in mind.
The ball is in your court.
Brother,
Sorry to have wasted your time; I thought I was clear that the profanities I hear are mostly on Right-Angle; not this video. This video just reminded me to post my GENERAL comment.
Maybe my standards are a little high? Didn’t mean to impose them on anyone. My comment was more to Bill than to you all.
A rule I impose upon myself is that If I can’t say it to my pastor about his wife and kids, I likely shouldn’t say it in a public.
I am not immune to the use of the words; just cut in front of me in traffic and…
Ah, I took what you said to mean there was some sort of profanity in this video somewhere prior to the 8:40 timestamp. I couldn’t find any profanity in the entire video but I wanted to be sure before I said anything to you.
I can’t recall ever hearing anything on the videos the guys post here that you wouldn’t normally hear on any TV show today, and much worse on the TV shows. I don’t care for that either but I can’t recall any actual profanity in here other than a couple of very, very rare instances.
That said, this is a public (behind the paywall) discussion forum so what you post in here is fair game for discussing.
Scott sometimes reads these posts, I don’t know how often or how thoroughly. I think you’d be better served to do what Ron SAE said and post something in the member’s forum. I can’t speak for Scott Ott in any manner at all but I have seen him respond to members questions and concerns in there.
There too, it’s open to the rest of us and thereby fair to discuss. I’d love to see what you have to say, as I stated previously, because my experience and yours seem to differ somewhat.
The member’s forum is a good place to hash out that kind of thing and the BW.com guys are always trying to serve us the best they’re able so I’m sure that at least Scott would be interested too. Whether he chooses to say anything or not, or participate in such a discussion in any manner, is totally up to him of course. He’s under no obligation to converse with any of us at all and just does so at his own discretion for his own reasons.
“Nuts”
General McAuliffe’s response to the German offer to surrender before the Battle of the Bulge.
According to Wikipedia “The choice of “Nuts!” rather than something earthier was typical for McAuliffe. Captain Vincent Vicari, his personal aide at the time, recalled that “General Mac was the only general I ever knew who did not use profane language. ‘Nuts’ was part of his normal vocabulary.”
Maybe that is why we consider them “The Greatest Generation”
When I think of my time in the Marine Corps the COs I considered the best, who were most influential to me personally, were also the least profane. They were so competent they didn’t need to rely on profanity as a crutch, in fact it would have gotten in the way. That was quite a revelation to a salty Marine and increased, not diminished, my respect for them.
CO’s are officers and gentlemen. It’s in the job description. Company and Platoon commanders are aspiring to be CO’s and that’s also in their job description. Their officer’s persona is an integral asset to their leadership roles. It is carefully crafted, honed and is polished every bit as much as boots and brass.
I’ve known quite a few of them from both in and out of the uniform and they’re not always the same person when out for a beer with the boys as they are in their office on base talking to junior officers and enlisted personnel.
A bunch of us, officers and enlisted, active or not, all get together around here on a regular basis. The officers, when not being officers, are just regular people with the standard gamut of personalities anyone else has. If they tried that “Officer and a Gentleman” persona on the rest of us we’d have a great time making them pay for that.
That said … as far as in situ on duty regular Marines goes — Fire team and squad leaders are another matter entirely. As are senior and junior NCO’s of all types.
I’ve known a Master Guns who was every bit as prissy and proper as a Presbyterian spinster on Sunday Morning. And I knew an old Gunny that could swear the soot off the oil barrel in the crapper. It was all the same to him if he used words people consider profane or not. Either way Gunny went about it was pure art and a true thing amazing to behold. Unless it was aimed at you personally of course. Then it was no fun at all.
My respect for either one had nothing to do with the profanities they did or did not use. My regard for them as Marines and as men did not in any way pivot around their language selections. In my experience in those situations, it’s never what you say or how you say it, it’s what you do that counts.
Much impact or lack of regarding profanity is a matter of delivery. I’ve seen some pretty impactful deliveries in my time. Done well that didn’t diminish my respect for the man, the uniform or the rank one tiny bit.
A lot also depends on if you were in combat arms or some other billet too. The comms, intel and airwing guys were always scandalized by grunt homoeroticism and such, we had a lot of fun making them blush and stammer at every chance we got. They seriously thought we were sickos and that’s the way we liked it. There’s a difference between the trigger pullers and the rest of the Corps and we never let them forget that. We love them too, but they’re not out there where the fecal material impacts the air circulation equipment and there’s a difference between us.
Semper fi, bro.
Reminds me of an old Beetle Bailey comic strip where the chaplain catches Sarge cursing out Beetle. So the chaplain tries to coach Sarge on how to express himself without using profanity. Sarge asks about several stunts that Beetle or his fellow soldiers do that warrant Sarge’s profanity and the chaplain comes back with responses like, “Private, that was wrong, you shouldn’t do that,” and others similar. Sarge finally tells the chaplain that his phraseology just doesn’t quite capture the true nature of what is happening. So the chaplain asks him what Sarge really feels like and the cartoon caption is all the daggers and symbols used to denote swearing. The final frame of the cartoon is Sarge holding a bouquet of flowers standing outside a hospital room talking with the doc, who is telling Sarge, “He just keeps saying, ‘Oh my, oh my…'” Classic GI humor.
There is a reason it is called cursing. I think that my own profanity level increases according to how powerless I feel in a situation. As in, those *@%#s who have the *^#@ nerve to tell us we have to put that untested and ineffective &^@# in our bodies. As a fairly potty-mouthed Christian woman, so not a very good practicing Christian, I am convicted in my heart that this is an area where I am a hold out against God’s plan. This is willful disobedience in that I have an extensive vocabulary that I normally use in everyday situations. Foul language is sinful in two ways: it curses people or situations and it is unfaithful that God is omnipotent (at least in my case). Good job, Zo, I can no longer kid myself that my cursing is no big deal. Rats!
After shattering my ankle I sprinkled the environment with more than a few f-bombs and s-bombs. I learned that I had been overusing profanity because they really didn’t satisfy. So I made a point of cutting way back on my use of profanity, enough that people noticed.
Casa Blanca would have been a much better movie with a few F-bombs. Not.
It comes from a lack of respect.
I use profanity so rarely that people who know me know I’m really ticked when i use it. Used a lot, it loses impact and shows lack of vocabulary and thought. (As said here before.) That said, if used rarely, it provides emphasis and release.
Exactly. I hadn’t read the comments before I posted mine above so what I said is along the same lines as yours.
I probably use profanity more than you do but when I do it’s a signal that I’ve got very strong opinions or feelings about the context I’m using it in.
… or I just don’t care what the person I’m addressing thinks because they’ve forfeited my respect.
To add to my last comment, a great example of what you’re talking about is this guy I’ve been following for about a year now on COVID … I think he’s had the most balanced, level-headed, clear-minded approach to the whole thing from the beginning (Dr. Zogg MD, Dr. Zubin Damania) At first he was dropping the F-bomb right and left in his videos.
I thought it cheapened his message, and made it so I did NOT want to share his content. Apparently others thought so, too, and we said so, and he’s made a conscious effort to minimize that since then. And you know what? It’s more effective. And much easier for more people to listen to.
This is one of my pet peeves today. I think there should be such a thing as polite society. For one thing, when profanity is overused, which it is, it loses its punch. It’s a cheap and less and less effective way to appear “street” knowledgable and “edgy”.
It uglifies the world.
I think, among friends in private settings, it can be more appropriate than out in public. But nobody checks themselves anymore. We were out on the river last summer and this woman was (drunker than a skunk) just shouting profanities all the way down the river, all day long (and as these float trips go, we’d pass them, then later they’d pass us, and on and on as staggered swimming stops lend themselves to).
She seemed to think it advertised how cool she was and what a fantastic time she was having and how she didn’t give a *$%! what anybody thought of it, which apparently makes you “cool” these days. She also seemed to turn it UP whenever there were kids passing (and we had several kids in our group).
That leads me to another topic, I see these memes all the time about how you shouldn’t care what anybody else thinks of you. I know what the original point was, that one can care TOO MUCH what others think of them and they live miserable, neurotic lives. But it has become a “thing” now to be proud that you really don’t give a bloody $*@ *@&! what anybody thinks of you, ever, just do whatever you want, no matter what. Never mind the fact that it makes YOU…
well it makes you … a sociopath.
There exists reality in both the sacred and the profane. You use profanity cheaply it looses all shock value.
Profanity is a sign of a poor vocabulary. Profanity is often consists of multiordinal words that can mean or modify anything being expressed.
I have an excellent vocabulary but I’m not averse to using profanity sparingly to illustrate a point contextually for additional emphasis. Or to vent frustration, pain or anger, which I usually do privately. Still, I do use some profanity in casual conversation with close friends in a relaxed environment. I don’t feel particularly compelled to shield young kids from salty language as long as it’s used judiciously and it isn’t vulgar and filthy.
As far as Bill’s shows, the profanity is mild and seldom used. It’s certainly a matter of opinion, but I wouldn’t hesitate at all sharing anything Bill and the guys produce with anyone, adult or child.
Overused, vulgar, repetitive and crude profanity does nothing but diminish the person using it, besmirching their character and intelligence.