The problem with banning naught words is what, exactly?
In the family context you wash your kid's mouth out with Lifebouy soap. It tastes terrible. The kid watches his mouth for awhile, until the soap wielder is out of earshot. The kid grows up watching his mouth. Hasn't forgotten the words, but is a bit more judicious when deploying the full repertoire of invective.
Maybe we should ask why we use expletives, ejaculations, invective, exclamations of anger, hurt, intensification, and the like.
And why we use the naughtiest words in the language to express ourselves for the edification of all within hearing range whether we know them or not. Why don't we use nice words when we stub our toe? Why always the worst?
I dunno. Never thought much about it. Just did it, I suppose.
Do you remember the comic, Andrew Dice Clay, from Brooklyn? Every word out of his mouth was F-this and F-that. Coming from Brooklyn, he'd insert the F-word in between syllables of the same word, just to intensify the effect, no-effing-kidding.
George Carlin did a monologue that was aired on the radio 30 years ago, according to the article below, in which he used, and the station was punished for airing, seven dirty words. The most graphic, of course.
I don't know what it is about these and other dirty words. By convention, they're deemed naughty in the English language speaking culture, such as it is. We don't get upset when people who speak Spanish say they're naught words. We don't understand a thing. Or Italians. I played golf with a native of Rome. Dio cane! He'd say when he missed a makeable putt. What'd he say, I'd ask my other Italian companion. "God is a dog," he said. I suppose it could've been worse, but it sounded pretty intense when the fellow who'd just missed par spat it out.
There are different reasons we don't like kids to hear certain words. They're apt to use them, and this reflects badly on the parents. "Damn!" I said at the table, and my son and his wife asked me not to say that. Say what? You know, that word. Why not? Because the baby is here. The baby is two years old and learning to speak. We don't want her to know "Damn!" I guess because how would it be like if a two-year-old asks for some damn milk, which she probably would, come to think of it, as she's a clever little devil.
The other day at dinner, her mother offered Liana a cup of milk.
"Would you like some nye-nye?" Christina said.
"Nye-nye" is milk in Cantonese. This kid is being raised double-cultured, to reflect the parents' ancestries.
"Yes," Liana said.
I said, "Nye-nye is milk."
I said that to reinforce the learning of the word for me, as once in the car Liana asked for some nye-nye and I didn't know what she was asking for.
"You want a cookie?"
"No."
"Some water?"
"No."
"Some milk?"
"Yes."
Bingo, I had a bottle of milk in the pack. We'd been to the beach.
So after I say, "Nye-nye is milk," Liana, age two-and-three-quarters, looks at me and says, "Nye-nye means milk."
We all laughed at Liana teaching Fapa Bob a word in Chinese. I didn't know that she knew the word "means."
So we can't use salty language in front of Liana because if we did, she might develop into a salty adult, like Fapa Bob.
Getting back to the big stuff, I suppose that we can't say "Fuck" because when said calmly, it evokes a graphic image of two people engaging in sexual intercourse. It comes from early, early, English and before that, from the root to hit or bang. David Letterman the evening on television, used the term "Banging whores," to describe Elliott Spitzer's conduct with a young woman who'll soon be very rich.
Why can you say "banging whores" on broadcast television but not "fucking whores?"
Does one evoke an image more graphically than the other? I don't think so. They're both the same in evocative power, as I see it. The latter is more intense than the former because the latter is deemed to be more intense. It's as though we all agreed on this verbal point. Far be it for me to overturn thousands of years of convention.
But this is the problem the Supreme Court faces next term, as it has taken up the case of the FCC, which regulates and punishes verbal misconduct over the nation's broadcast airwaves, against various performers who let slip some "Damn" as I did at table only worse.
We have enough free speech to get by where I live, but when we're talking about a national standard, we want ascertainable standards, not ad hoc dog law. This is where you kick the animal after he messes up, as you can't post a list of wrongs for him to avoid. "That'll teach him," you think. And he learns not to do that any more. Maybe.
A friend asked whether constitutional law was the most difficult subject, as he'd heard. Maybe, is the answer, but problems like where to draw the line between free expression and obscenity are one of the hardest problems, as there is not unanimity as to where the line should be drawn. Some people like to use naughty words to make a connection with like-minded people. Freedom of expression and association means encouraging people to connect as best they can using the language of their choice, not government's choice, or the neighbors speaking through government. So we have to be careful about what we restrict or we may restrict too much.
We want people in America to to refer to their effing politicians or that effin' Bush without fear of being thrown in jail or broken by fines if caught by a TV camera and broadcast. Suppose you're at a demonstration against the war in Iraq and you're unhappy about being led into a bankrupting war that is killing American boys and girls by the thousands and you let out with an "[expletive] Bush" (or Powell). Should you go to jail for your political expression because you chose the wrong words? No. I don't think so. The case is Cohen v. California, which you can look up on this site or on Findlaw. A kid in L.A. wore a jacket into court with a logo stating "Fuck the Draft." An offended sheriff's deputy arrested him even though the judge said to let it go. The Supreme Court upheld the jacket-wearer's right to proclaim his belief in graphic, profane language.
The republic yet stands, I'm pleased to report.
This obscene market crash and profane war are far bigger problems, I'm afraid. There's not much that the Supreme Court, for all its vaunted wisdom, can do about these.
The Washington Post article reporting on the Court's acceptance of an FCC profanity case is below.