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| Why should we be shocked that Hillary Clinton curses? Swearing is so cool | Why should we be shocked that Hillary Clinton curses? Swearing is so cool |
| (30 days later) | |
| A lot of people have trouble with Ed Klein's new book about the Clintons, Blood Feud. They focus on his verbatim recall of events he didn't witness, eclipsing even the legendary Bob Woodward's ability to didactically cite fictional minutiae with more instantaneous fidelity than a preteen correcting you about Harry Potter's owl's name. (It's Hangry, you little shit.) | A lot of people have trouble with Ed Klein's new book about the Clintons, Blood Feud. They focus on his verbatim recall of events he didn't witness, eclipsing even the legendary Bob Woodward's ability to didactically cite fictional minutiae with more instantaneous fidelity than a preteen correcting you about Harry Potter's owl's name. (It's Hangry, you little shit.) |
| But all the debate over Klein's veracity has overshadowed the importance of Hillary apparently calling Barack Obama a "motherfucker", which is problematic. | But all the debate over Klein's veracity has overshadowed the importance of Hillary apparently calling Barack Obama a "motherfucker", which is problematic. |
| But because you could – and many have – nitpick Hillary's "quote" to make a point about Klein writing his books from within an Imaginarium, the American public has overlooked Klein's point, which is that Hillary is bad. She's bad because she said bad words, and we know they were bad words because we call them that. In Klein's world, that is just basic thuganomics – but I have to raise vociferous objections to his thesis, because girls swearing is cool. | But because you could – and many have – nitpick Hillary's "quote" to make a point about Klein writing his books from within an Imaginarium, the American public has overlooked Klein's point, which is that Hillary is bad. She's bad because she said bad words, and we know they were bad words because we call them that. In Klein's world, that is just basic thuganomics – but I have to raise vociferous objections to his thesis, because girls swearing is cool. |
| (Actually, almost all swearing is cool. When I meet people and am anxious about a swear word slipping out, I'm really just trying to will them by the sheer power of my mind into accidentally swearing, just so that I can start swearing around them in return. In fact, I'm relieved Ed Klein said that Hillary said "motherfucker", because it frees me up to say things like, "Ed Klein's work is confabulated bullshit".) | |
| Klein's flaccid point seems to be that Clinton's use of bad words is part of an unseemly ruthlessness – which only makes her sound like a typical politician. (Calling his message confused is generous.) But, one of the knocks against women candidates is their "access and passage to remorse"; Hillary, though, sounds in Klein's fancies full of gall-dropping MF-bombs. Generally we celebrate that in men – for instance, political wonks love to recount the time that President Lyndon B Johnson said, of an enemy, "I want his pecker in my pocket". (That was a different time, before people would Beavis-laugh at that sort of thing rather than respect it.) | Klein's flaccid point seems to be that Clinton's use of bad words is part of an unseemly ruthlessness – which only makes her sound like a typical politician. (Calling his message confused is generous.) But, one of the knocks against women candidates is their "access and passage to remorse"; Hillary, though, sounds in Klein's fancies full of gall-dropping MF-bombs. Generally we celebrate that in men – for instance, political wonks love to recount the time that President Lyndon B Johnson said, of an enemy, "I want his pecker in my pocket". (That was a different time, before people would Beavis-laugh at that sort of thing rather than respect it.) |
| The remaining motivation for Klein's "quote" could have been to use it to appeal to the idea of Clinton as the fallen woman – the profanity signaling her depravity – which might have worked if any of us were personally acquainted with more than just a few token weirdos (religious types, mostly) who don't swear at all. Swearing might be gross at times and it's ideally not something meant for all audiences – but utilizing someone's occasional profanity as the basis of a character attack is up there with a sinister ad voiceover saying, Candidate John Cussbrother uses toilets. | |
| The swearing-as-depravity trope relies argumentatively on the idea that we all start from a word-virginal state later corrupted by, well, something or other – whatever it is, it's not natural. Of course, given that almost every conservative culture-war tut-tutter invariably dry-humps the Greatest Generation as the apex preceding our pitiable cultural decline, one can only imagine that those people believe that the army had to dragoon a loutish, non-Protestant immigrant to teach all the innocent grunts to forgo their native Archie Comics English: | |
| "Whaddaya gonna call Jerry the first time you meet him?" | "Whaddaya gonna call Jerry the first time you meet him?" |
| "DOODY, sir!" | "DOODY, sir!" |
| "Well, I'll tell you what, son, I got an S-word twice as powerful as doody with half the syllables. You'll hit that Nazi sonofabitch with four times more doody than he expected." | "Well, I'll tell you what, son, I got an S-word twice as powerful as doody with half the syllables. You'll hit that Nazi sonofabitch with four times more doody than he expected." |
| "Gosh, sarge." | "Gosh, sarge." |
| "Say damn, trooper!" | "Say damn, trooper!" |
| Like a lot of the popular narratives buttressing the outrage economy, history ruins the swearing-as-novelty thing. Many a message board trivia thread contains a giddy link to Gropecunt Lane, and Jesse Scheidlower's The F-Word covers half a millennium of documented uses over a (frankly overwhelming) 270 pages. Its catalogued derivations reveal a breadth of imagination staggering even to the most profane teenage sociopath reared on an internet of Japanese cephalopodal penetrative excess. | Like a lot of the popular narratives buttressing the outrage economy, history ruins the swearing-as-novelty thing. Many a message board trivia thread contains a giddy link to Gropecunt Lane, and Jesse Scheidlower's The F-Word covers half a millennium of documented uses over a (frankly overwhelming) 270 pages. Its catalogued derivations reveal a breadth of imagination staggering even to the most profane teenage sociopath reared on an internet of Japanese cephalopodal penetrative excess. |
| Further, whatever impulse we have to see women as having become foulmouthed in the last 45 years or so likely owes more to simply hearing from more women in the public sphere than from some taint befouling the supposed outliers. | Further, whatever impulse we have to see women as having become foulmouthed in the last 45 years or so likely owes more to simply hearing from more women in the public sphere than from some taint befouling the supposed outliers. |
| Science probably ruins the rest of the narrative. In "The Science of Swearing", Timothy Jay and Kristin Janschewitz argue that data shows that kids begin to learn swearing by context around age two, reaching a kind of conversant maturity in swearing by age 11 or 12. Given the limited media and social exposure of the first half of those years, the old drug PSA rules apply: they learn it by watching us. | Science probably ruins the rest of the narrative. In "The Science of Swearing", Timothy Jay and Kristin Janschewitz argue that data shows that kids begin to learn swearing by context around age two, reaching a kind of conversant maturity in swearing by age 11 or 12. Given the limited media and social exposure of the first half of those years, the old drug PSA rules apply: they learn it by watching us. |
| Still, knocking Clinton for swearing works on some people – at least in part – for the same guilty reason that I think women swearing is awesome. On a rational level, I cheer women who hear men express themselves vulgarly whenever alcohol, athletics, pain or frustration are manifest and then assert their right to do the same. As Jay and Janschewitz point out, swearing has both physiological and psychological therapeutic benefits that we all seem to understand instinctively. (Example: skinning your knuckles against the engine block while stripping the threads on a screw.) Who am I to deny anyone psychic compensation or momentary relief from pain? | Still, knocking Clinton for swearing works on some people – at least in part – for the same guilty reason that I think women swearing is awesome. On a rational level, I cheer women who hear men express themselves vulgarly whenever alcohol, athletics, pain or frustration are manifest and then assert their right to do the same. As Jay and Janschewitz point out, swearing has both physiological and psychological therapeutic benefits that we all seem to understand instinctively. (Example: skinning your knuckles against the engine block while stripping the threads on a screw.) Who am I to deny anyone psychic compensation or momentary relief from pain? |
| But on a wholly irrational level, women swearing feels cool and thrilling because I still haven't fully succeeded in outgrowing a retrograde sense that it is something they shouldn't do. It is unladylike, even to me – which is why Ed Klein won't go broke putting "motherfucker" in Hillary Clinton's mouth. Doing so is just another stop on the Idiot Local, which has been chugging from Lesbian Station through She Killed Vince Fosterville with stops in She Has A Penisburg and Benghazi since 1991. | But on a wholly irrational level, women swearing feels cool and thrilling because I still haven't fully succeeded in outgrowing a retrograde sense that it is something they shouldn't do. It is unladylike, even to me – which is why Ed Klein won't go broke putting "motherfucker" in Hillary Clinton's mouth. Doing so is just another stop on the Idiot Local, which has been chugging from Lesbian Station through She Killed Vince Fosterville with stops in She Has A Penisburg and Benghazi since 1991. |
| Calling attention to women who swear is stupid. It's stupid when it's a mendacious and politically cynical attack designed to rob a woman of her identity by likening her to a supposedly offensive masculinity. And it's just as stupid when it's the gentle paternalism of a feminist ally who thinks it's just so adorable when the slight bookish brunette girl at the Model UN quotes Office Space and calls an opponent a no-talent ass-clown. Everything about the idea of "ladylike" is preposterous up and until certain criteria are met anyway – like owning a fancy horse house and specially-tailored horse pants and, ideally, a horse with a name like Aquitanica. | Calling attention to women who swear is stupid. It's stupid when it's a mendacious and politically cynical attack designed to rob a woman of her identity by likening her to a supposedly offensive masculinity. And it's just as stupid when it's the gentle paternalism of a feminist ally who thinks it's just so adorable when the slight bookish brunette girl at the Model UN quotes Office Space and calls an opponent a no-talent ass-clown. Everything about the idea of "ladylike" is preposterous up and until certain criteria are met anyway – like owning a fancy horse house and specially-tailored horse pants and, ideally, a horse with a name like Aquitanica. |
| While I'm sure that some no-talent ass-clown will nonetheless argue that the scourge of foul-mouthed women proves that we live in a fallen, depraved world destined for the fires of hell, it's easier to just realize that it only signals that women are joining in whatever joy or catastrophe men were already fucking up good and proper. Hillary swearing doesn't make her Nixon: they just share a vocabulary. | While I'm sure that some no-talent ass-clown will nonetheless argue that the scourge of foul-mouthed women proves that we live in a fallen, depraved world destined for the fires of hell, it's easier to just realize that it only signals that women are joining in whatever joy or catastrophe men were already fucking up good and proper. Hillary swearing doesn't make her Nixon: they just share a vocabulary. |