squarewaves

Aug. 15, 2009 at 10:56pm with 43 notes

reblogged from mrgan

Aren't we all getting a little old for this?

marco on profanities in the mainstream media:

But I guarantee that your children have heard you say “fuck” at least once. You’ve definitely said “shit” within earshot, and they’re likely to be even more familiar with its more useful counterpart, “bullshit”. And, if they go to a Catholic school, they can probably tell you exactly where the Bible contains “ass” and “cock”.

So they know them. We know them. We know they know them. They sure know we know them. What’s the big deal?

(…)

Is there any question as to why the sequel to Meet The Parents, which frequently played on the joke that the main character’s last name was “Focker”, was called Meet The Fockers and was a tremendous hit among the same kinds of soft, pious, embarassed parents who won’t say “fucker” to save their lives but would laugh like crazy every time they said “Focker” in the movie and brag to their friends that they saw “Meet the… FOCKERS!” twice last weekend?

There will always be words unacceptable in mixed company; if it weren’t so, unmixed company wouldn’t be as fun.

But as for the NYT clumsily explaining that what the person said at this point was a bad word - you know, the one with the F, hehe - that’s pathetic adherence to the bullshit letter of a bullshit law. They said what they said; just don’t run the damn quote at all if it’s so unimportant that you can freely take the prude axe to it.

The day after 9/11, CNN ran all sorts of amateur footage shot from the streets around the WTC as the unthinkable unraveled. One of the chilling clips showed the collapse, and the audio was a firefighter going “Oh shit, oh shit, shit. Shit!”

The next day, the clip was again shown. The audio was cleaned up.Now that’s what I call offensive and objectionable.

I first encountered Neven Mrgn on YayHooray many years ago, and he’s always had something intelligent to add to any conversation he’s been involved in (he’s also a damned good coder).