What the [Bleep] Has Happened to Our Speech?

By Jennifer Hartline Published on January 17, 2016

Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, and America needs her mouth washed out with soap.

For the love of everything decent, people, please stop it already. The assault on our ears and our sensibilities has just become too much to bear.

Recent decades have taken 40-grit sandpaper to our manners and decorum and we’ve become coarse and undignified. Do we even realize how low we’ve sunk? Why must our every conversation these days be mucked up with profanity? Even if no one else objects, I still object. I’ve exceeded maximum tolerance for vulgarity.

I’m a fan of Downton Abbey for many reasons, one of which is the momentary relief it brings from today’s filth. It reminds me that it’s possible for people to behave in a civilized and respectful manner. Indeed, people used to consider it a personal and social duty to hold their tongue and mind their speech, especially in the presence of ladies.

Trouble now is, being a lady has become worse than passé. Women today seem to revel in being just as crude as the worst of men. When ladies stop being ladies, gentlemen slowly cease to exist. Blessed Fulton Sheen warned us that “the history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.” Generally speaking, many men will rise to what’s expected of them, or sink to whatever they can get away with. It’s the built-in design of the sexes either bringing out the best in each other as God intended, or collapsing together into the stink.

Well, it really stinks out there. And I, for one, have had enough. I’m no fragile flower in need of a fainting couch, I’m simply a lady who is sick of the constant onslaught of crudeness.

I can acknowledge there are times in life when “aw, shucks” just doesn’t express the grief, the pain, the horror, the injustice. In those moments, it’s pardonable if our pain finds its way out of our mouths with a choice word.

But we’re not talking about the rare utterance anymore. Our vulgarity is so ubiquitous and unrestrained, it’s just a perpetual stream of verbal trash, and everywhere’s a dump.

Not even our children are spared anymore. Mothers today brag about how they curse like a drunken sailor in front of their children and feel no shame or remorse for it whatsoever. It’s the entitlement of adulthood, after all.  Some actually expect their kids to never repeat what they hear coming from Mom and Dad’s mouths (uh-huh, sure), and others are fine with it, provided the kids learn when and how to let loose with the expletives. Yep, they’re teaching the kids how to swear the “right way.” This is hip, progressive parenting!

So much for any innocence. Now many of us are training boys from toddlerhood how to insult a woman with foul language. Little girls quickly learn to be tacky and rude. Boys and girls become men and women who think nothing of degrading themselves and each other with disgusting language.

The worst cow-pie of all, in my book, is the F-word. I recall rarely hearing that word uttered in public when I was a young girl, and now, it’s as commonplace as milk & bread. It’s a filthy word — there, I said it. I want a sanitizing wipe for my eyes when I stumble across it in print, and I wish I could go back in time and turn off my ears when I’m forced to overhear it out loud. I detest that word, and I’ll walk away from anyone using it. If someone spoke that way in my home, they’d be asked to leave.

Kids learn it early on because it’s in the music they hear, the games they play, the shows they watch, the websites they frequent. And of course, Mom and Dad talk that way, too! It’s become everyone’s go-to word for every sort of grievance and insult, not to mention a vile reference to sexual intercourse, and it needs to stop.

It’s sad that even many Christians find it acceptable and defensible, and go about sounding just as vulgar as everyone else as though showing off their cultural bona fides.

The defensive rationale typically offered is that there are far worse things a person can say, so profanity is hardly worth complaining about. What’s really harmful are racist words, bigoted words, and hurting someone’s feelings by calling them stupid, or fat, or ugly, or any other unkind thing. (It’s perfectly okay, however, to call a woman a b**ch.) Really? Our defense of vulgarity is that it’s better than unkindness and hatred? Can’t we clean up our act on both fronts?

I’d counter that it’s unkind to force someone else to listen to your foul language, but regardless, condemning the muck of profanity doesn’t mean we don’t recognize the evil of hatred.

And speaking of evil, let’s stop using the name of Jesus Christ as an expletive. Stop using the name of God as an exclamation, unless you’re actually calling out to Him in prayer. Stop teaching your kids it’s acceptable to say “godd**n”. It isn’t. It’s vile and sinful, so knock it off. Don’t say you’re not teaching them to say it. If you’re saying it, you’re teaching them it’s okay.

Oh, I know. Modern “science” has ruled that swearing isn’t bad, it just gets a bad rap for moral and religious reasons. Swearing, they tell us, can be healthy and beneficial. It can provide some pain relief when you’re injured; it can give a sense of power; it can facilitate social bonding. Oh sure. We definitely need more social bonding based on crudeness.

It can also just make us boorish, coarse, nasty, and rude. It breaks down the best and rightly-ordered qualities of men and women, which are gallantry and self-control; gentility and delicacy. Bottom line: you can’t argue with the Dowager Countess of Grantham. Vulgarity is no substitute for wit.

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