By John Branston
(Warning: This column contains language that some readers may deem unsuitable and offensive.)
The other day Penny Hardaway did a no-no when he used a dirty word to respond to a reporter who asked a question the coach deemed dumb.
Both Memphis newspapers – The Commercial Appeal and the Daily Memphian – had a field day with this perfect click-bait storm of a story combining sports, celebrity, dirty words, and clever headlines using “bleeping” or “f——” instead of what is one of the most common words on premium-channel television these days.
Readers of a certain age, say over the age of 65, will remember when hell, damn, and shit were enough to get you suspended from school and your mouth washed out with soap.
Readers over the age of, say 30, might remember comedian George Carlin’s bit “Seven Dirty Words” which is still a hit on youtube.
Carlin first did the bit in 1972 so this is the 50th anniversary of an important event and one of the Seven Lame Excuses for a Column. Another dirty comic, Lenny Bruce (charmingly whitewashed in the series Mrs. Maisel), was arrested in 1962 on obscenity charges for using “f—” and “tits” in a show, so this is a freaking (ok word) double landmark anniversary!
How times have changed. I am pretty sure I heard trailer-trash Ruth unload every one of the seven dirty words multiple times in a single scene in every episode of “Ozark.” Likewise, and then some, for Dutton daughter Beth in “Yellowstone.”
Any rap singer worth his or her millions of followers and his billboard can outcuss either of them.
But you won’t see lyrics in news stories about rap or hip-hop artists. Which is like doing a story about “actress” Linda Lovelace (“Deep Throat”) without using the expression (unmentionable) for which she was famous.
It is time to put an end to this phony modesty. Show don’t tell – first rule of journalism. If you write about it, don’t hold back. If Penny”s bad word is front-page news, as it was four days in a row, then print the f—— expletive.
The great journalist and linguist H.L. Mencken examines the usage of “cock” “piss” and “tits” in his 1937 classic The American Language. “The four-letter words are treated very warily in the dictionaries. Even the great Oxford omits those of sexual significance although it lists all those relating to excretions. Webster’s New International admits arse and piss (the latter of which occurs seven times in the King James Bible) but bars all the rest.”
In the nineteenth century, he notes, “Even the word decent, if applied to a woman, was ruled indecent.”
In his novel of the cattle drives in the nineteenth century West, “Lonesome Dove”, Larry McMurty’s characters use few dirty words — not because McMurty was skittish (hardly) but because cowboys aand whores didn’t talk that way then. They are no less believable or tough.
As Woodrow Call says by way of apology after beating the hell out of someone, “I don’t like rude behavior in a man.”
What a line. What a man. What a hero. May we some day see his like again.
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John Branston covered Memphis as a reporter and columnist for 35 years.
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