September 19, 2005

Pandagon: In Defense Of Cursing

Go read Jesse's Defense Of Cursing. Now. No, I don't mean in five minutes. Go now. What?! You want to know why?

My first response was to bring up the preference of some to be massaged into oblivion than be shocked into clarity. For some reason, 'You're a fucking racist idiot' is a more offensive statement than 'black people have less native intelligence than other races, and embrace poverty accordingly'. Even worse is the 'the major goddamn drain on the budget is the tax cuts, as the federal budget has shown every fucking year since 2002', which simply blows 'the tax cuts have increased revenue, because that's the power of fiscal conservatism' out of the water. A lie, an insult, a grossly racist imputation is afforded legitimacy because it's said nicely.

That's why. And it only gets better. Check out the comments, too, for some spectacular trolling.

3 comments:

MosBen said...

One of my many favorite movie quotes which I find applicable in a variety of situations is the following:
(Roger has just removed his hand from the handcuffs linking him to Eddie.)

Eddie: Are you telling me you could have done that at any time? Any time?!

Roger: No, only when it was funny.

Some people like to pretend that swearing is some kind of failure of the user, but just like any speech it's a matter of use. People that can think of nothing more creative than a constant stream of explitives aren't going to hold much attention for their arguments, while people that don't think swearing adds some productive force to their rhetoric are, well, wrong.

Also, what Jess said about how insane it is that swear words are considered offensive while thinly veiled racist/classist/whatever statements get off the offensiveness hook because they're said in a gentile manner.

Noumena said...

That took me a second ... I haven't seen that movie in a long time.

MosBen said...

Shame on you sir. Shame!

Droopy: Your floor, sir. Have a nice day, sir.