Sunday, December 07, 2003
 
Firing the F-Bomb Cruise Missile

So Senator John Kerry has launched the f-bomb:
    "I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything'? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to f - - - it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did," Kerry told the youth-oriented magazine.
Oooh. He's young, hip, and aggrieved, and has used this word undoubtedly only after his advisors told him it was okay. Some people might disagree with the leader of the free world using the f-word, but I got no problem with it; I'm from the North Side, wherein the f-word was a part of my vocabulary in the third grade and in frequent rotation therein (much to the disgust of Danny H, my sophisticated fourth grade friend).

No, what bothers me is that Kerry deploys it against a sitting president. I expect that's how he would be as a president, too, a stretch just inside the limit of my vast and fertile imagination. He'd save his wrath for internal opponents, and people who disagreed with his policies. Not against external threats or the pompous politicos and despots who would like to lay low our very civilization.

So if a leader's going to display controlled psychopathy with the f-word, I'd rather he use it in appropriate places. In the imperative tense, such as to the United Nations, to Little Kim, to Jack Chirac. Or as an alternate pronunciation for the unvoiced labiodental fricative in the names of Arafat or Kofi. These uses of the f-word I could support.

But for JFK the lesser, I would offer the word in its imperative reflexive, but he prompts me to a North Side Stream of Cussingness, which is a stream of common swear words, grouped and repeated, not in a particularly clever fashion, but with feeling.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:51 PM
Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home
 
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."