July 19, 2006
When will all synonyms be equal
The news media spent the weekend debating how to play the graphic video footage coming from the G8 Summit in Russia. No not the extra strange incident where Our Fine President gave German Chancellor Angela Merkel an impromptu back rub, but the tape of him uttering the horrible word “shit” while talking about the Israel-Hezbollah war with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. You see under law passed by Our Fine President our friendly government monitors over at the FCC can fine stations up to $325,000 for every incident where that word is uttered on air.
Some TV stations aired the clip unedited, while others went to the time tested bleep technology to appease the sensitive ears of the masses. PBS now has a policy where they must blur the lips of footage showing people swearing. Lots of kids pick up bad habits by reading lips on the playground. Of course if Sesame Street would quit teaching all our kids to read lips there’d be no cause for pixelated lips in the first place. (Frontline Executive Editor Louis Wiley Jr. is against the pixelated lips. Read his take here.)
Even with no threat of FCC fines hanging over their heads, the papers were still wringing their hands over this one. Some newspapers ran the word in their stories, others carried it only online and some dared not print its name. I guess the paper’s who avoided the word were afraid it might ruin the breakfast of sensitive-eyed readers.
I really don’t understand what the fuss about certain words is really about. Had Our Fine President said “See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this rubbish and it’s over,” no one besides a few sticklers for proper use of the term irony would have raised an eyebrow. Dictionary.com lists 19 synonyms for the word shit (including rubbish) and most of them would have fit just fine in that quote. I do not understand why one word should be verboten while it’s matches in meaning are fine for use in any situation.
In this instance I have to stand behind Our Fine President. His description of things seems fairly accurate to me, and if our society likes to give that word the most forceful emphasis of any of its synonymonic brethren, he was right to use it in this conversation.
There was no reason for newsrooms to debate how to run the quote. It’s blunt and candid nature made what Our Fine President said newsworthy on its own without the controversy over the curse aspect of things.
The fact that our nation remains so uptight about little things like one word being OK for public use and another with the same meaning shunned makes me sad. I’m a big fan of big vocabularies. I enjoy twisting words into new uses and creating new ones as needed. The whole swear word concept is about limiting the available language and I see no sense in that. If you’ve got a good reason why shit and fuck must be hidden but poop and lay are just fine let me know.
Now if someone could just educate Our Fine President on the meaning of the word irony…
The meaning of irony… see, that’s the really sad part. If you are big on vocabulary then I don’t think this is the president for you. He doesn’t likely know any of the 19 synonyms of the word shit. Now if you like to make up words, he may be your man.
I share your consternation with the persistance of verboten words in this culture. It is ridiculous for a single word to have so much more power associated with it than with another word of the same meaning. However, I don’t really think swear words expand the language so much as limit it. Personally, despite a long list of alternatives I am fully aware of, my go-to words in many emotional situations are the same words we’re “not supposed” to say. The power behind the words just make them that much more fun to use, thereby limiting the use many appropriate alternatives, I think if shit, fuck, etc. were all of the sudden completely acceptable, their usage would plummet immediately.
So, since the media is restricting the use of some of the most popular words and phrases in the language, I propose similar limitations on the use of “cut and run” and “on the brink” in the media.
The beauty of him saying ’shit’ is that it detracts from the statement about Syria. The debate is now about whether or not the president should have said ’shit,’ and not whether or not he should have said that Israel should bomb Syria.
Oooh… “Synonymonic.” That’s Hot, Coot.