Profanity

Alan Weiss's The Uncomfortable Truth®

I find the use of profanity is the last resort for the inarticulate. It’s supposed to be “daring” and “shocking” but it’s actually just lazy. I sometimes surf through the comedy channels and hear standup comedians simply repeating m…..f….. over and over. There is no intellect there, and intellect and pain are actually the basis for almost all real comedy. Putting profanity on a book cover is boring, but it beats trying to come up with an appealing title. But most alarmingly, it’s simply entered the vernacular as adjectival alternatives. I hear parents in restaurants and at home over meals say s..t at in front of their kids. WTF is used by the more delicate, but it’s profanity nonetheless. Teachers and the “elite” often use it to show they’re “hip” and “down to earth,” which is the absolutely last thing they are. At my gym, where we have personal trainers, the music is very often rap with profound profanities, n….. for blacks, and “bitch” or far worse for women, yet there are black people there as well as women. This is simply the communication evidence of an uncivil age, a greedy and self-centered age, where people want shortcuts to success with no restrictions placed upon them and no concern for a contribution to the society and well-being around them. Everyone is entitled, and if their entitlement doesn’t work out, then they’re oppressed, and then they protest for more entitlements. This way lies madness. As an optimist I believe we’ll recover. But I’m the eldest of the Baby Boomers, my father fought in WW II. We can send carrier groups to the Middle East and apply economic sanctions globally. We can use drones, missiles, and remote weaponry. But we could never win the equivalent of WW II with our contemporary society because no one would want to make the sacrifices at home that were required. They would simply say, “Fuck that.”