Fuck, Shit, Piss. (offended?)

This is the first time in a while that a newspaper article has instantly inspired me. This is a good thing.

There is an article on the front page of today's Tennessean, where they talk about tossing out the FCC's near-zero-tolerance policy on broadcasting expletives. Now, while you don't have to swear when you speak, in fact some say it makes you sound less educated, but in my opinion, there is nothing funnier than a well timed swear word. No one was better at this art than Mr. Gould back home. A very close runner-up is these guys. It got me thinking though. We've all been taught from a very young age that we shouldn't say certain words because they are bad. We all accepted that and didn't say those words until we all got older and felt rebellious enough to let our inner sailor out into the world. Even to this day as an adult, I try to censor myself around my mother. Swear words, don't say 'em.

But why though? It's just weird. You can get away with saying "crap" all you want, but make it "shit" and you are in big trouble mister. "Dang" as apposed to "Damn" as well. Now, I know there is a religious reasons for Damn to be a swear word, and that's fine. But shit, fuck, piss, ass, bitch and cock-satchel are all no-no words. You can say "frick" and it's okay. You can say pee, and that's alright. It means the same thing, and even sounds close to the same thing, yet when you put those specific letters in order and write them down or speak them, you can get fined. How is this possible? It is literally just a word. No one knows why they are forbidden words, but we all know that they just are. Well, actually I'm sure someone knows, and I have been reading a bit about the origins of swear words here, but the general public doesn't know. I know that fuck can defiantly refer to having sex, or "fucking," and we sure don't want the youth of america to know what that is. Then they might do it, and that's wrong. Shit, well that's gross. You take a shit, and it's smelly, and you do it in private. No one likes to have their private stuff talked about. But it's really funny when someone uses it to describe how they feel about a statue.

"You like that statue?"

"naw, it's shitty."

"lol"

Swear words just make phrases have more power. You know someone is serious, because they make it perfectly fucking clear their opinion on the matter. (see what I did there?) Example:

"I love summer because I can lay by the pool for hours and relax."

"I fucking love summer because I can lay by the pool for hours and fucking relax."

The second example shows how much passion the person feels about summer, and how much it seems he or she needs the relaxation.

I get the fact that we were raised to not say those words, and to not accept those words in society. I get it. But the fact that the average person on the street (i.e. me) can't explain why we don't say those words is odd to me. It's ingrained into our society at this point, and that's not changing soon. I'm not rallying for the proliferation of the use of the word shit on NBC prime time television, it just struck me as odd, and the fact that it just now struck me as odd, at age 27, is also odd.

Weird world, this is.