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Liberals are more likely to curse on blogs. They are, however, less likely to participate in eliminationist fantasies about adherents to major world religions or attempt to assault a sick 12-year-old boy’s family because of their countertops.
Let’s take Lucianne.com, the site mentioned in the article as having “no profanity at all”. First topic on the main page, some highlights:
Reply 2 - Posted by: Highstick, 8/7/2008 11:49:35 PM
Obama and his group are caving to the clintons.
How would he react to say, the Russians ? (I wont bother asking about the towel heads)
Reply 4 - Posted by: equinefldad, 8/8/2008 12:56:46 AM
I thought the Dumorats were the party of peace (and tolerence and inclusion, etc.) ...
Just like Islam is the religion of peace ...
Reply 6 - Posted by: GeneSmith, 8/8/2008 8:58:05 AM
There’ll be a papering-over of the rift between the Baracksters and the PIAPSists but don’t count on it averting chaos. We need to get in there and surreptitiously stir up this vat of ill-will and excrement. Keep it bubbling ‘til RatFest08!
Reply 9 - Posted by: geekrunner, 8/8/2008 9:13:18 AM
What I don’t get is this demand by the PIAPS camp to be ‘’honored’’ and ‘’respected’’ for her ‘’historic’’ campaign. If Hussein doesn’t watch out, he’ll get suckered into honoring and respecting her right into the nomination.
I feel wholesome, don’t you? Bonus fascist thread, if you were interested.
I’m intrigued by anti-profanity arguments, because they almost always come back to relative intelligence and “hate”. A person who excludes profanity from their vocabulary, other than losing some wonderfully useful words, gains some +3 to righteousness bonus. It doesn’t matter what they’re arguing or how they’re arguing, because they always - always - fall back on the “you don’t have facts and you can’t argue coherently” misdirection. Substance, ironically, flies out the window because you’re already declared substanceless, privy to the repeated scoldings of the prim and proper brigade of racists, sexists and miscellaneous bigots who would never dare curse at your kinky-headed, menstruating ass.
It involves a whole series of misapplied and poorly reasoned arguments - that the use of profanity constitutes an “ad hominem” (it doesn’t), that an argument is rendered logically invalid through the tacit admission of the speaker that they had to rely on the dread profanity to make it. It’s an effort to control the scope of argumentation through arbitrary linguistic boundaries.
The other problem is that profanity is almost always considered to be the signpost of anger. Which is, pardon my language, rigoddamndiculous. I grew up in a household that cursed, and profanity was used for everything from surprise to anger to sadness to joy to satisfaction to annoyance. I also grew up in a house that read constantly, that encouraged the use of a rich and ever-expanding vocabulary, that led me to win spelling bees and writing competitions and scholarships. This is because my house was fucking awesome.
The saddest part of all this, though, is that profanity triggers the “you can’t win an argument without namecalling/profanity/etc.” argument...which in turns keeps many conservatives from ever getting anywhere near a coherent argument (cf.: Jeff Goldstein or, really, anyone at Protein Wisdom...or Michelle Malkin...or Little Green Footballs...or any conservative site, really). They’ve so convinced themselves of their own intellectual superiority through denial of profanity that they often cease thinking once profanity enters the conversation.
It is nice, though. It provides an endlessly interesting way of stopping any number of conservatives from making bad arguments - just say “fuck”, and they’ll think they’ve won. Should spice up your Labor Day picnic with your random conservative uncle who flew in from Jersey to talk about all “those people” who are driving down the property values, housing crisis be damned. Just talk about how the potato salad tastes like chunky piss, and that little part of his brain should click in, releasing a series of self-congratulatory endorphins throughout his body.
Posted by
Jesse Taylor on 07:53 AM •
Permalink
towel heads)
That isn’t as bad as cursing? That’s not name-calling? That’s arguing coherently?
I don’t think those words mean what they think they mean.
Liberals get called out for the use of the word “fuck” because it apparently makes you an “unserious” speaker (because, I guess, profanity is juvenile.)
Meanwhile the use of the phrase “towel head” is apparently considered a valid rhetorical device.
Is it any wonder that the future of mainstream print newspapers appears to be swirling down the toilet? Frankly, the prudes in the mainstream press can all go Cheney themselves.
I had to google “PIAPS” to find out what the hell it means. Apparently it’s “Pig in a pantsuit” which is how they like to refer to Hillary Clinton. What refined and noble folks our moral superiors over in the right wing are.
I made the mistake of going to the “fascist thread”. God what idiots.
Some goof at a LA media co. decided it would be cool to have Obama-philes have a symbol like the three-fingered W Bush’s folks had, so he’s created a logo with hands creating an “O”.
Not one of the commenters in over the 100 I scanned picked up on the fact that the guy who hopes for 75,000 people saluting with an “O” has nothing to do with Obama or the campaign.
They’re all quick with the “Zeig Obama"s, but not so much with the reading comprehension.
What a bunch of fucking hypocritical asstriscuits they are. Racist slurs and the support for gross violations of human rights are fine, but cursing is bad, m’kay.
Here’s what I think of that: ass, bastard, bitch, cunt, damn, fuck, prick, shit, shampoo, lather, rinse, repeat. Oh, and also: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.
And while I’m on this subject, fuck those torture apologists. Fuck the people responsible for US prison camps on foreign soil. Fuck the Rapturites. Fuck the anti-sex crowd. Fuck you, posters at Lucianne.com. Fuck Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Bill-O, Assrocket, and the rest of you freedom-hating shitheads of that stripe. I hope you all choke on bucket-loads of guano - a table-spoon per crappy argument, which should equal a few metric tons of bat-shit by the time it’s all tallied.
I hate them all - those fucking pathetic, inhumane, turd-brained, racist sphincters. Every god-damned last one of them can suck my brown eye.
There. Now THAT is profanity. And my use of it doesn’t change the fact my opinion on these people is absolutely correct.
But I thought liberals were over-educated, elistist effetes? To be limp-wristed geeks out of touch with Real Americans, and at the same time be crude, stupid, angry and inarticulate takes a lots of acumen.
Clearly we are superhumans with superior skillz and we will crush the babbling right with the clanging bell of cognitive dissonance. FEAR US IF YOU LIKE, CONSERVATIVES, YOUR HEADS WILL ESSPLODE JUST THE SAME.
I always loved how people would dance around the word “nigger” - we’d be reading Invisible Man and Ralph Waldo Ellison used the hell out of that word - trying to hide it or n*word it or what have you, but they’ll be more than happy to discuss all the reasons they can’t stand rap music, baggy pants, and people who live on the wrong side of the tracks.
How many times do we get to hear “The problem with black people is...” or “Why do black people have to be so lazy/stupid/violent/racist-against-me” or “We should have sent them all back to Africa, like Lincoln intended” from wingnut pundits? But at least they didn’t say “nigger”, because that would be unconscionable.
Caren.
I don’t think those words mean what they think they mean.
I think they actually just don’t care what the words mean or whether their arguments make sense, as long as on some superficial level they can get the idea wormed into people’s heads that liberal=profane=unserious. They don’t actually believe the claims they make.
Zifnab, it seems to me to be a species of magical thinking; the power is attributed to the word — that is, to the arrangement of letters and its pronunciation — instead of the meaning behind it. It’s the same thing that’s at work, of course, when someone writes “f**k” or “the f-word,” as though anyone reading it didn’t know what they mean. I think that, even though it seems absurd on this level, it’s a considerably dangerous phenomenon.
They’ve so convinced themselves of their own intellectual superiority through denial of profanity that they often cease thinking once profanity enters the conversation.
You’re far too kind to those cockholsters. They never started the thinking to begin with.
Also, profanity and anger is sometimes the only appropriate response, because the “argument,” such as it is, doesn’t deserve any respect. Like back when we were all being called traitor by everyone. Why should anyone craft a polite, civil response to that? The appropriate response is “Fuck You.”
Leave Jersey alone. The uncle from Ohio is much more likely to talk about those people.
Conservatives don’t consider “towel heads” or any racial slur to be profanity?
I think there should be some Discovery Channel or National Geographic special on Conservatives because they’re such fascinating creatures.
The swearing gambit is identical in all of its forms to the anger gambit: namely, that if you are angry about something you cannot be taken seriously (despite the fact that conservatives are always angry about something). You see, anger disqualifies you from having an opinion on something, unless you’re a conservative, in which case you can spin your anger as common sense, though it is neither as common as you hope nor sensical.
The number of contradictory ideas that one must hold in mind to be a conservative on the internet is staggering.
I’m not a profanity guy myself, although I’m certainly not going to dismiss something because the author drops the f-bomb. In fact, I’ll keep reading if he’s especially creative in his profanity.
As my fellow word-lover, the late great George Carlin once said of this silliness:
All of you over here, you 7: Bad Words. That’s what they told us they were, remember? “That’s a bad word!” No bad words—bad thoughts, bad intentions ... and words.
These neoCons and Know-Nothings are all about bad thoughts and bad intentions. Their entire political philosophy boils down to “I’ve got mine, so fuck you, Jack.” And yet they can’t bring themselves to use that actual phrase, because it contains a Bad Word.
What is fun, however, is once in a while baiting one of those “I’m so calm and reasonable” right-wing trolls into a logical corner, poking him in a sensitive spot, and then watching him lose it and resort to the sort of cursing he’d usually criticise.
I am a troll. I like to think of myself as an equal opportunity troll, in that I visit Blogs and sites from across the political and ideological spectrum on a regular basis. I try and read and absorb what the people are saying, regardless of the words they select to emphasize their points. In my opinion, curse and/or swear words are like salt, pepper, garlic, sage, etc. Spices that give flavor and texture to the words. Racist, misogynist, sexist, ageist, (____)-ist language poisons the speech and renders the thoughts undigestible to me. So to all you good people here, curse away, this troll respects your thoughts no matter how they are flavored!
I think that part of the way conservatives rear their kids, is to train their entire sense of right and wrong to respond only to things like cursing and sex. Stuff like fraud or violence--even against themselves--just doesn’t get anything near the same rise out of them. That’s why they’re still more upset about Clinton’s decade-old BJ than anything Bush has done.
“Also, profanity and anger is sometimes the only appropriate response, because the “argument,” such as it is, doesn’t deserve any respect.”
That flies directly in the face of core Democratic beliefs like Obama saying he will sit down with crazies like the leader of Iran. Of course his Jew-baiting, America hating, no gays in my country rhetoric is ridiculous and doesnt deserve any respect. Yet, he is a force in the world and must be dealt with. So bomb him because he’s unworthy of our respect? Curse your idealogical opposites because they are unworthy of your respect? Doesn’t get anyone anywhere long term
Some goof at a LA media co. decided it would be cool to have Obama-philes have a symbol like the three-fingered W Bush’s folks had, so he’s created a logo with hands creating an “O”.
Not one of the commenters in over the 100 I scanned picked up on the fact that the guy who hopes for 75,000 people saluting with an “O” has nothing to do with Obama or the campaign.
They’re all quick with the “Zeig Obama"s, but not so much with the reading comprehension.
Caren, Creator of Animorphic Pancakes
So, did any of the fascist-baiters, shocked at the idea of a crowd of folks using a hand-signal to express their support of a politician, pick up on the fact that it was an attempt to emulate a gesture already in actual use by actual Republicans to express support for Bush?
Well, obviously a hand-signal depicting an initial for a Republican is ok, but the same idea applied to a Democrat is fascist. IOKYAR, yet again. That Obama is actually more popular right now than W ever was is, no doubt, central to their point.
You know, one time there was this guy on a Star Trek mailing list I moderate. The list is dedicated to Q, so of course this guy had to spam the list with his endless rants about how mad he was that they killed Data. When he got around to calling Troi a whore because she was shown having sex WITH THE MAN SHE JUST MARRIED, I said something like “None of these rants have a damn thing to do with Q, so knock it off or I’ll kick you off the list.”
He responded with “I didn’t curse *you* out, you witch.”
So I kicked him.
The inability to tell that a profanity used as an intensifier in a sentence is *less* offensive than directly calling someone a non-profane but highly gendered and extremely nasty insult is the mark of the conservative. You can replace “highly gendered” with “specific to an ethnic group or sexual orientation” just as easily.
People who think it is okay to call people very insulting things to their faces as long as they never use a bad word, or that using a “bad word” as an intensifier in a sentence (not as an insult) is worse than insulting someone with a non-bad-word, offend the *shit* out of me. Fuck yeah.
When he got around to calling Troi a whore because she was shown having sex WITH THE MAN SHE JUST MARRIED
Wow. If anyone wants to understand the difference between a geek and a nerd (Star Trek varieties), that gynophobic basement-dweller serves as an excellent example of the latter.
Lessee - obscenity (cribbed from Steve Young, although others have had the same idea):
A Neocon walks into President Bush’s office and says, “I’ve got the greatest foreign policy you’ve ever seen.”
President Bush says, “Great, I’m always looking for a good foreign policy. Tell me about it.”
“Okay,” says the Neocon. “We wait for a national tragedy; a diabolical attack on our land. You know, something that can bring the country together and at the same time make the people numb to any form of common sense from that point on. Next, we attack the people behind the tragedy. You know, keeping the world and the voters behind you.”
“I like it,” says Bush. “Go on.”
“Well,” says the Neocon, “this is when you ask for enough incriminating evidence to invade this sovereign country and throw out this fuckface leader who no one likes anyway.”
“So far so good, but what if we don’t get the proper evidence?” asks Bush.
“That’s the best part,” says the Neocon. “We don’t have to because the entire piss-poor, suck-ass media opens it’s legs for you like a two-bit hooker and they help you shove every piece of shit down the country’s throat since they’ll eat any crap you serve up to them because, get this, you pick up a bullhorn and say ‘I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!’”
“I don’t get it,” says the President. “How do I get away with that crap just by saying ‘I hear them?’ And anyway, didn’t the people who knocked down the buildings die when their planes hit the buildings.’”
“Sure,” said the Neocon, “But people will want to make sure you get the people behind the people who 3,000 innocent Americans.”
“Bin Laden?”
“No, Saddam.”
“Um. I don’t get it.”
“That’s the point. You don’t have to, ‘cause about thirty seconds after you start the war, you just say it’s over.”
“Wow. We win that fast.”
“Nah. You don’t have to win. You just have to say we won.”
“Cool,” says the President. “Do I get to wear a jet fighter uniform.”
“Sure.”
“Fuckin’ A!”
“Here’s the kicker,” says the Neocon. “The war you said we won continues for years, kills thousands of young Americans soldiers, tens more thousands of Iraqi citizens who didn’t ask us to invade, run up trillions in debt and cuts benefits for men and women who have fought for the very freedoms you say we’re fighting for now. Any person questioning the policy is trashed by your administration and demonized as traitors by a bunch of talk radio pricks who care way more about a fucking dollar than they do about the young soldiers without proper body armor who come home in boxes because of the fucking bullshit they say is actually freedom on the march. You allow torture, spy on Americans without a warrant, hold prisoners - most of whom are found to be innocent - without access to lawyers, render the rest to countries who you know will tear out their fingernails one by one. And with all that, you’re still able to take month-long vacations only flying back to Washington to sign a bill that ignores all scientific evidence substantiating a brain-dead, comatose woman to be, in fact, a brain-dead, comatose woman.
“And then for the grand finale… You take one humongous dump on the Constitution. All this, based on fuckin’ lies.”
“Great,” says the President. “What do you call it?”
BEAT.
“The Aristocrats.”
Wow,” says the President. “Got anything else?”
“You bet,” says the Neocon. “A hurricane approaches the Gulf Coast...”
Therefore, in conclusion, ergo and unto and all stuff like that:
Fuc*k! normativity and all PC practitioners thereof.
[And-"parenthetically", he said- “I sort of fu8cking love that idea anyway."]
I think that part of the way conservatives rear their kids, is to train their entire sense of right and wrong to respond only to things like cursing and sex. Stuff like fraud or violence--even against themselves--just doesn’t get anything near the same rise out of them. That’s why they’re still more upset about Clinton’s decade-old BJ than anything Bush has done.
I’m really starting to think that for a lot of conservatives, words are power, and actions are meaningless. As long as Bush talks big about God and the wonderful things America is doing in the world, it literally doesn’t matter that every action he’s taken has led to disaster. As long as he says the right thing, actions don’t matter.
If I have learned nothing else in this life, it’s to pay attention to what people do and ignore what they say, because people will say all kinds of shit and not back it up.
You know how I knew my now-husband really loved me? He cut my bagel in half for me before he left for work one morning because he knew I was paranoid that I would cut myself trying to saw it open. So he took an extra five minutes and cut it for me.
Actions, not words.
The one that really bothers me is the n-word. I really agree with people about how oblique references like that reinforce the power the word holds, and I wish I lived in a world were I could do something to reduce its power rather than build it up. But as a WASP, I feel that, as much as I would like to have some kind of ownership over the moral issues around that word, I don’t feel that I do. It’s not ‘mine’ to devalue, I suppose.
<blockquote>In my opinion, curse and/or swear words are like salt, pepper, garlic, sage, etc. Spices that give flavor and texture to the words. </b>
And they work far better if used w/o a set recipe and thrown in based on the person’s judgement and experimentation. Fuckin’ A+ analogy!
Oh dammit… massive headaches from rainstorms lasting months. Roads flooded out all over southern Maine… bleah.
As a deeply unserious and profane leftist, I’d just like to say that I’m totally stealing “asstriscuit.”
Oh man Jrod, you beat me to it. I love asstriscuits too. With Cheez Whiz. And cockholsters is my very next favorite. Both gave me a wonderful visual, and a slight crack of a smile. I love this blog. Fuckin’ eh?
This is because my house was fucking awesome.
Haha! This is my favorite line of the entire post. Thanks for the chuckle, Jesse!
...who would never dare curse at your kinky-headed, menstruating ass.
Um, it’s not my ass that does the menstruating… 
But, yes, I totally agree with you on this. I have recently spent a lot of time with my dad because of a family reunion and the funeral of a family member, and every time he’s heard me curse, he’s dressed me down for sounding uneducated and inarticulate. But, look, there’s some damn expressive curse words! And nothing has encouraged that mode of expression to me more than my English degree from fucking Stanford, which I do not think makes sound either uneducated or inarticulate. *rolls eyes*
Amazing. Liberals, who have much more reason than conservatives to be angry at the way our country is going, express that anger more (at least if your only metric is swearing). Also we don’t think fucking is evil, so we’re a lot less likely to think that saying “fuck” is evil. Who’d have guessed?
Personally, I’m the only person I know who is much less likely to swear online than offline.
(The “Blaspheme” button is more appropriate than ever!)
Yeah. Fuck these motherfucking right-wing shitbag douchescrotes.
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That isn’t as bad as cursing? That’s not name-calling? That’s arguing coherently?
I don’t think those words mean what they think they mean.