Ed Rasimus wrote:

On Mon, 09 Feb 2004 09:47:27 GMT, Guy Alcala
wrote:

snip

I guess it's time to stock smelling salts again, to revive all the fragile souls
who will be swooning into a dead faint from the mere knowledge that someone has
used an anglo-saxonism. Where is Queen Victoria when we need her?


I'm continually reminding my students (particularly when they lapse
into vulgarities in classroom discussion) that language is richer than
simply depending upon a half dozen expletives to fit every situation.

Couldn't agree more. Early on as a teamster, I realized that my language had become
extrememly coarse, and more importantly, I noticed that my thinking seemed to be
coarsening along with it. So, I made a conscious decision to clean it up and
exercise my vocabulary, saving the expletives for appropriate occasions.

I suggest that there is much enjoyment to be gained by insulting one
in such expressive rhetoric that they don't realize until two days
later that they have been trashed.

Unfortunately, many of the people who you insult in this fashion are unable to _ever_
realize that you've insulted them, which takes much of the fun out. ;-)

There is also the loss of ability to really shock when it is required
if the most shocking terms are worn out by daily application.

Definitely. I can still remember our mild shock (and amusement) when, as 13 year old
Boy Scouts, my friends and I heard my mild-mannered, religious and always well-spoken
Scoutmaster cut loose. We were in the middle of a week-long backpacking trip, it had
been a long, tiring, frustrating day, and we were crossing over a small stream on
some brush cover when he took a misstep and fell through up to his thighs in 35
degree water, being trapped there for several minutes. The air turned a deep and IMO
entirely justified shade of blue while he extricated himself. Naive souls that we
were, we thought that he didn't even know those words, having never heard him use
them before (and almost never afterwards). Which was pretty silly of us, as he'd
grown up on a farm, had served in the army in WW2, and had worked blue-collar jobs
all his life. He demonstrated a familiarity with their appropriate use that, if
anything, caused us to respect and like him even more than we already did.

And another time, when we heard a kid who never uttered even the mildest oath let
loose with a "goddamnit," we knew something was seriously wrong and all came running.

I proudly point out that the basic Anglo-Saxon reference to copulation
does not appear at all in When Thunder Rolled, although there are two
"****s" and a "bull****". The second book (currently in the hands of
the publisher) contains one "****ing" used as an adjective in a direct
quote from a POW.

And that, I feel, is when they should be used in full, without playing silly games,
to properly convey the flavor of the situation. One of my favorite examples of this,
and one of the most egregious examples of not just silly but also stupid censorship,
was in the movie MASH. In the course of that, Bobby Troup plays a sergeant who has
to drive around Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John (Elliot Gould) around
various spots in Japan, especially a golf course, while they're dressed up in bizarre
Japanese costumes and acting like buffoons. Troup's muttering under his breath of
"God Damned army" at their antics on several occasions, in a tone that totally
indicated his disgust and resentment at officers, his situation, and the military in
general, was classic, and reminiscent of Willie and Joe at their best. And yet, ever
since I first saw it uncut when it was released in 1970 or so, for television and
even some versions of the movie, "God" has been routinely muted, leaving Troup's lips
moving throughout but the phrase coming out "___ Damned Army," ruining much of the
comic effect (at least for me).

As an example of just hownon-sensical this particular piece of censorship is, it's
hard for me to believe that anyone who would be offended by the utterance of the
phrase "God Damned" will be placated by its removal (and the word "screw" as in
"Hotlips? Screw her!"), when the movie retains its theme song ("Suicide is
Painless") and a story line involving the (physically) "best-equipped dentist in the
Far East" fearing that his first episode of impotence means he's become a latent
homosexual, he becomes depressive and decides to kill himself, is given a final meal
which deliberately apes paintings of the Last Supper, is given the "Last Rites" by a
Catholic priest, and is then assisted to commit a mock 'suicide' after which he is
"resurrected" by a nurse having sex with him (out of wedlock, no less!) while he is
unconscious and then tying a blue ribbon around his penis (that last may have been in
the book but not the movie: it's been almost 35 years). Yeah, nothing offensive to
conservative Christians in any of that, just make sure you remove that "God" ;-)

BUFDRVR's quote which started my rant being another case in point, unless we're
supposed to believe that the person in question was really saying something like
"Level the farting town!" In that particular case, I doubt that anyone given the
context and supplied with just the following, "Level the (expletive deleted) town!",
would be unable to supply the missing word (or a compound version), so pretending to
hide it behind #@%& or ---- is both puerile and pointless.

Guy