“Bomb” Away, Please
The news reports on the “you’re a fucking asshole” lawsuit (see previous post) were, naturally, filled with references to “the F-Bomb”.*
Could we knock this off, please?
Among the stupid and childish turns of phrase we have to put up with every day, this one particularly annoys me. I could sort of stand it when people talked about “the f-word”. Apparently there are people so wound up that somehow they can’t bear to hear a certain word – one that conveys a perfectly ordinary, and hardly rare, meaning – even when it is not used in the second-person pejorative sense. Whatever. If accommodating a sub-community of elementary-school librarians among us it what it takes to be left alone, so be it.
But however sensitive you may be, can any reasonably hearty adult really regard any word as a “bomb“? You’re telling me that speaking a word, even without offensive intent, is like dropping a bomb? Good God – suck it up a little. I’d hate to think what would happen if you encountered something that was actually physically harmful. (“Ahh! Ahh! I’ve got a neutron hangnail!” “OMG!! I opened this envelope and got a paper cut of mass destruction!!”) Jesus . . . you’re embarrassing.
Now, at this point, one might introduce the question of “the N-word”. Those who make it their business to be childishly offensive about race might like to claim that if the “F-Bomb” should be acceptable (or at least not a bomb), so should the “N-word”. To which I say: fuck you. The words don’t function in the same way, and they don’t carry the same impact. The f-word has never been a derogatory name for an entire class of people; it has never been a catch-all put-down used by one race to embellish, or even contribute to, its pervasive torture of another; it cannot evoke systematic degradation, despair, humiliation, and abuse – or threaten them. At worst, it’s an insult – perhaps unjustifiable in some circumstances, but not inherently a part of an overarching oppression that is in its every way and aspect unjustifiable. To employ the N-word is to invoke that oppression, and at least in part to make it real. To pretend that the one is the equivalent of the other is just part of the eliminationist strategy racists have been pursuing ever since the question of holding them accountable was seriously raised – it takes a quintessential tool of discrimination and turns it into a mere schoolyard epithet. For reasons of freedom of speech, I am not willing to criminalize either word, but I can recognize that one provokes a reaction that any normal person should be able to withstand, and the other invokes a harm that no person should be asked to.
But as for simple offense . . . well, offense, like so many things, is in the eyes (ears) of the beholder. And I want to be sensitive to offense, but at the same time there should be some breadth of room within which to let oneself loose in public without empowering every lilly-livered bluenose to demand that we burn the house to roast the pig for their personal delectation. We seem to have sprouted up a particularly prissy crop of whiners in recent years. Enough’s enough.
* Insert obligatory Rahm Emmanuel joke here.** ** I really don’t get the thing about Emmanuel and his supposed habit of swearing. Who gives a shit? (Clearly not me. But you knew that.) What’s odd about it is the way people can’t seem to say anything else about him. It’s one of those weird stereotypes that, somehow, become the only way a certain person ever gets seen, no matter how complex or accomplished they may be: Jackie Gleason was fat; Dean Martin drank a lot; Liberace was gay . . . . Now, that kind of childish titillation and narrow-mindedness is SOP for the GOP – it is essentially the only way they are capable of responding to or thinking about their opponents. (Ted Kennedy had an automobile accident . . . 40 years ago; Bill Clinton got laid . . . almost 10 years ago; Barney Frank is gay . . . .) But even Obama keeps making “Rahm swears a lot” jokes. I mean, even if you want to joke about him, can’t you at least come up with something interesting to say? Is there only one fact you even know about him? It seems to me another example of the stupidity and limited outlook that characterizes so much of politics, even among Democrats.
I believe the term “F-bomb” comes from sports talk radio, which ought to explain everything.
Wow, for a moment there, I actually thought you were complaining about people actually saying “Fuck,” which just floored me. Then I realized that you were complaining about euphemisms for the work “fuck,” and all was right again with the universe.
By the way, I’ve heard people talk about “dropping an N-bomb,” too.
Oh, now – you didn’t really think I was coming out against swearing, did you? Obviously, I haven’t been working hard enough.
There should be no battle of the bombs. These two words shouldn’t be equated, which they are, unintentionally, through shared “bomb”-status. “Fuck” is sometimes inappropriate, sure (whatever that means). But, under no circumstances does it evoke a reaction similar to the word Nas tried to title his most recent album. If “fuck” is a bomb, where do we go from there? It’s like giving a mediocre dunk a 50 in the slam dunk contest – now everything meeting that bar of offense is a “bomb?” That is either a very low setting of the bar, or indicative of dearth of creativity in the vulgarity department.