Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Word That Shall Not Be Named

My friend Ken Mcdowell has written often and forthrightly about the loss of civility in our national discussions. While he sees himself as the voice of reason, and often he is, he still sometimes hears the exact same tone as either the soothing sounds of songbirds or the suffering wail of a banshee depending on whether it emanates from the right or the left. In a recent blog post Ken discussed Bill Maher’s use of a certain ugly word to describe Sarah Palin. http://kendrickmacdowell.wordpress.com/ . Some words are too ugly to even partially spell using asterisks to replace vowels. I don’t even want to go that close to this particular word. Let’s just say it rhymes with the thing men are doing when they carry guns into the woods to find dinner.

There are all kinds of terrible words in the world. Some of them are just overwhelmingly ugly and embarrassing when used publicly, but can be appropriately inappropriate, even pointedly precise when used in more closed settings. There are no ugly words among whisky-ed men in smoky rooms. As long as everyone in the room has given permission by their presence in such places, there are no politically incorrect words, just colorful, descriptive adjectives and racist, sexist and filthy jokes. But Maher was doing his “Stand Up” act in heavily Democratic Dallas County. Maher claims he was well received, though no one polled the women in the audience.

Some words are fighting words, some make us cower, embarrassed for humanity to hear one of our own use or misuse it.  However, there are words at the very edge of the flat earth of language beyond which is nothing but the void. A word that rhymes with the smallest weakest puppy in the litter, is one of these.

The word Bill Maher used to describe Sarah Palin is one of the most provocative words I know. I wish I didn’t know it. A friend told me he used it in the last argument that he and his ex-wife had while living under the same roof. I have heard of men who were startled to find a butcher knife up under their ribcage after using this word. I know many perfectly polite women for whom this word triggers the nuclear option. I have seen it used by people who knew full well that once the word crossed their lips, fists would fly and all hell’s fury would break loose. F-bombs get dropped like napalm on the jungles of Vietnam, but one ugly little word rhyming with a football term for a strategic kick that relinquishes possession of the ball, makes Dresden look like a playground.

I once saw a teacher of deaf children take on a stripper in way-too-high heels (that story is rather complicated but exonerates me of any accusation of having been in a so-called gentleman’s club) and grab a beer bottle as a weapon, to emphasize her objection to the use of the word. One can only imagine the row – no, one can’t imagine – if Maher had actually said this insult to Palin’s face. I have no doubt Palin could have and would have been within her rights to kick Maher’s tookus.  

Maher’s use of “the word you never say” is interesting in all kinds of ways. First, it’s like a signal admitting he is less and less often funny, going the way of almost all comics (Robin Williams, George Lopez, Gallagher, Carrot Top) save a few, such as, Bob Hope, a rare, funny Republican of yesteryear.

Apparently, the PC police have now infiltrated the right and are offended by name calling when it is directed at them. This is like the black kettle that has been blackened further after being left over the fire for days while cooking black bean soup, calling the kettle black. For years they scoffed and belittled the “PCers”, starting their racist jokes and their sexist comments with “…well it may not be “politically correct” but…” They always got their little finger workout doing the quote signs in the air for emphasis, and then headed off into something that was sure to offend, unless of course they were in some inner sanctum of male inebriation. You can call the President of the United States the Anti-Christ but if you use a word that rhymes with the professional man who does the dangerous stuff in movies so Tom Cruise stays pretty, you have broken all of the rules.

If you want to be polite there are some perfectly nice church groups, book clubs, and nursing homes that you can visit. However, politics is a tough game and since there is little common decency among the men who play it, there is no reason to expect a special set of rules for the ladies. That said, if I was Bill Maher, I would grunt out an apology and watch my back.


2 comments:

  1. Now this is interesting my friend. First, though, wonderful post! Very clever, and definitely funnier than Bill Maher can hope to be. But let's break it down, you brass. All that linguistic rhyme-dancing around c*nt, and with a moral oneupmanship framing that some words are just too ugly to use even with an asterisk replacing the vowel -- though not quite too ugly to hammer home -- yeehaw -- with hunt, runt, punt, stunt, and grunt. And that was the point, yes? Let's have some fun with this word, and thereby shrink a bit of its venom ('cause the Ladies are a little hysterical about this one, wink), you Hell Calvinist Fig.

    You FB post says "naughty naughty word," as though "c*nt," applied to a female politician, warrants the moral analysis applicable to a nine-year-old boy caught looking at the Sears catalogue bra ads. Your exploration is all about the Boys understanding when c*nt is okay and when it's not. See, for me, it's never.

    The c-word, for some, is like the n-word to others. And we don't educate our youth about when it's appropriate, and when it's not appropriate, to use the n-word. It's categorically off-limits. It's a magnitude of insult that we don't even contemplate in comfortable drunk company.

    And that's my problem with your odd (coming from you) PC point. The n-word has been beyond the pale for a while. PC doesn't even apply. Similarly with the c-word. PC, as an occasionally civilizing and occasionally oppressive sensibility in American culture, concerns itself with vastly more subtle nuances than such manifestly obvious and odious slurs as the n-word and the c-word.

    Bill Maher wasn't being coyly "anti-PC." PC was nowhere in sight. Bill Maher was engaging in political dialogue, and opted to use the most offensive reference to a woman possible against a conservative woman he dislikes. I want to see your leisurely and clever post about a white comedian who uses the n-word about Barack Obama.

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  2. Well written.

    A language belongs to its speakers. Sometimes words get misused to deny others their dignity, or words gain too much power over our emotional lives. Then we sanction these words, put them in a semantic time out. They become taboo. It turns out they don't stay taboo forever, but that's another story.

    However, to people who *like* those words, making them taboo seems like a violation of their freedom of speech. When the n-word was proscribed, a lot of people felt wronged. It was like society had told them to "shut up!"

    But language changes and part of that process is that we put some words on the DL. Now that Queen Victoria is dead, it's okay to mention that so-and-so hurt her leg in an accident. We don't have to say "limb" or "appendage" anymore; in fact we *can't* use those words unless we're kidding. The point the Victorians wanted to make about sex and sexual speech has been made and we've moved on, leaving Victorian vocabulary behind us.

    There is definitely a vocabulary that's designed to deny certain groups any dignity. Think of "white trash," for example. I don't agree with that goal, so I try not to use those words (except when someone cuts me off in traffic, of course).

    With Sarah Palin, it's simple to stick to the basics: she doesn't seem to respect others, especially when they come from different backgrounds; she has a weak sense of responsibility; and she has to be the center of attention. Does that remind us of anyone?

    No wonder Maher changed the subject.

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