Awhile back, Russell Baker, in the NY Times, discussed the issue of
"offensive" language invading the popular media. He wasn't opposed to the
use of such language when appropriate, but he felt that common and
injudicous use resulted in the words losing their bite. In certain movies
where every other word is the "f" word, it begins to lose its effectiveness
as a shock word. If we put these words into such common use, what do we
have left to use when we're really mad?

It seems to me that we should be able to carry on a civil and thoughtful
discourse without using language that might offend some people, and reserve
the vulgar words for situations where we really want to be hateful or nasty.


Wm Mulligan wmulligan at msn.com
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