¶§§By John Branston
Clean Up!! As Memphis television anchor/reporter Richard Ransom used to say back in the day when he was reporting restaurant inspection scores, the failures need to “Clean Up.”
Right you were, and right you are, Richard. Dirty restaurants are bad enough, but nothing compared to dirty language in movies, songs, social media, and television. Oddly enough, the last holdouts refusing to print George Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words include the remnants of mainstream print and broadcast media that substitute first letters and —- for F-bombs, laud rap stars without printing their vulgar lyrics and stage awards shows that air cleaned-up clips and songs.
It is pointless and trite to protest, but there are alternatives. Here are a few.
Freaking for f-word variants. Fun, easy, and strangely habit forming.
Norman Lear, who died recently at 101, had characters who were funny, racist, insightful, original and controversial without dirty words in All in the Family and The Jeffersons and others. I don’t remember Archie Bunker ever cussing.
Another recent obituary, actor Ryan O’Neal was apparently a real-life hellion, but he was a charming rogue in Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon – with costar Madeline Kahn getting in some good cracks about tits and dicks without going blue.
Seinfeld Live and Seinfeld reruns. Simply amazing.
Curb Your Enthusiasm and Larry David. He gets an exemption because his ensemble cast members Leon and Suzie cuss so much it’s funny.
The Hitler Bunker rant meme where the Fuhrer goes off on former Memphian and LSU placekicker Josh Jasper without going “verfickt.”
National Lampoon Christmas and the dog with some “leghound in him” as Cousin Eddie says, so best to just let him finish.
Actor Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion in The Last Picture Show, which was considered a “dirty book” and “dirty movie” in the 1970s (featuring former Memphian Cybill Shepherd, then 20, being incredibly sexy). Sam the Lion throws kids out of his pool hall with this little lecture: “You boys can get on out of here. I don’t want to have no more to do with you. I’ve been around that trashy behavior all my life, I’m getting’ tired of puttin’ up with it.”
Tennessean Patricia Neal in Hud, telling Paul Newman “it would have happened sooner or later without the rough stuff.”
Lauren Bacall flirting with Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not: “Just put your lips together and blow.”
For scary rustics, check out Deliverance over Ozark.
Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange (or John Garfield and Lana Turner) and a diner tabletop in The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Put a buck in the curse bucket every time you bad curse. Aaah, f—- it.
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John Branston has been a reporter and columnist in Memphis for 40 years.
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