EDITOR’s NOTE: TMV uses “newspaper standards” in its post with occasional exceptions if running an embed of a C-SPAN or cable excerpt. Since words are the subject of this post, we are running this post as is.
(WARNING — This story contains adult language and is not intended for children.)
Or, should I say immature children under 80 years of age.
We see the warning at the beginning of many so-called adult shows on television. I am unclear whether in today’s culture it is a teaser or a CYA drill by the producers to ward off the parents for children protection advocacy groups.
I have never watched the new comedy series $#*! My Father Says based on a blogger written by Josh Halpern. It was voted the Favorite New Show at the 37th Peoples Choice awards Jan. 5.
No matter. Halpern’s dad can’t top my father.
As a child, I learned all the cuss words from my dad in English and more in Spanish from my Latino playmates in the predominately Mexican village of San Juan Capistrano, Calif.
My father could not control his frustrations of a vegetable grower when the crew or market messed up. Like the TV warning, he tried to be circumspect and never swear in front of my mother. Didn’t matter. We heard him from the cabbage and lettuce patches. He didn’t care who heard his rants.
Another thing which all parents come to understand: One slip of the cursing tongue is never missed by a child. It may take weeks for a child to memorize the math tables but a nano second filed for eternity of one bad word.
My father, who died 22 years ago, has been an occasional butt of jokes and humor among my brothers and cousins concerning his outbursts.
The best child story parroting his dad was my brother Tom, about age 8, when asked by the barber how his hair looked. “Like shit,” Tommy blurted.
A world famous author and psychologist told me my father’s outbursts were a case of emotional inferiority instability. All I know is that when it came to discipline, he was a giant threatening to use the horse whip on my backside when I was bad. I loved him for his other qualities, and, they were legendary. All good, compassionate and exemplary not only to his children but the community he graced.
Times change and the choice de jour of profanity dear to my father’s tongue were expletives describing religious and fecal affairs of state. Absent was today’s wildly popular F bomb used indiscriminately as a noun, verb, adjective and all other parts of speech diagrams.
As a teenager, my favorite was bitching. It meant anything and everything. Good, bad, cool, all thing in between.
I am sorry to confess that I use the F bomb and all its inappropriate usages: In my internal thinking expressed only to family, selected friends and a couple of doctors whom I suspect aren’t listening to my perceived verbal definitions of their practice.
I learned early the consequences of a cuss word. I was fortunate to attend Webb School, a private high school near Pomona, Calif., which employed a strict honor code and I observed to the letter for four years.
On the last day of senior finals, the one-day-a-week instructor from a driving school forced the students to sit at assigned seats before he administered the DMV exam. To me, that was a personal insult. I protested but moved, muttering “shit.”
I was kicked out of class and initially told I was suspended from school and could not graduate. Mercifully, Thompson Webb, the headmaster, said because of my clean record over four years (and pleas from my father and sobbing mother) he allowed me to graduate with the senior class. But I would not be named in the graduation ceremonies and had to pass the DMV test the following Monday, two days after school was closed for the summer.
“Jerry,” the wise old headmaster said, “you will be judged by your words. They have consequences.” I listened. But continued through the maze of life uttering profanities that fit whatever occasion.
Which brings me to tacit censorship of the written and oral words not fit for network television — or polite society, whatever that means in today’s world.
What boggles my mind is curse words bleeped from broadcasts. Nixon’s Oval Office Watergate tapes were redacted with thousands of “expletive deleted.”
EVERYONE knows what they are! So why censor the damn things?
It could be the last vestige of common decency and deference to others we have remaining in our social networking society. Don’t bet on it.
Jerry Remmers worked 26 years in the newspaper business. His last 23 years was with the Evening Tribune in San Diego where assignments included reporter, assistant city editor, county and politics editor.