The big political news of the day is the federal arrest of Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich (D - Jacknutistan) on some truly mind bending corruption charges. The lengthy criminal complaint (available here) has some detailed excerpts from wiretaps on the Gov's phones. The excerpts are rife with colorful language: "fuckers," "motherfuckers," and just good plain "fuck." The media, and US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald have gone out of their way to not actually say those words at press conferences and in TV stories.
C'mon. It's in a criminal complaint, for crying out loud. There's no point in "bleeping" yourself, and then explaining that "the word wasn't actually bleep," over and over again. What is this, The Christmas Story? The man's headed for some years in the federal pen (perhaps in a special Illinois Governor's Wing somewhere). If you're going to hang him with his words, don't sugar coat them!
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
A Plea for Profanity
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2 comments:
Well, I,for one, don't wanna hear the "F" word. I just think there's no reason to use it. Maybe they went a bit too far explaining the obvious, but just the same, I'd rather not hear the foul stuff.
It's got shades of Watergate and the constant use of "expletive deleted" from the published transcripts of Nixon's tapes, huh?
It being news and the afternoon hours that the press conference was, I appreciate them not using "the" word, since I've got my kids running around, and any chance I get to put news on and Noggin off is one that is invariably all too brief and thus must be savoured, not one sullied by my tripping over the couch to turn it off before certain words gets repeated. But yeah, they should have used a blanket approach, using "blank" or "blanking", explaining at the start that a word is missing.
Of course, that makes it sound like Gene Rayburn had a filthy mouth, too....
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