August 11, 2004 News & Views » Cover

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The Year of the F-word 

Cheney, Kerry and others bring the ultimate "4-letter word" to the fore

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The rise of the internet is the latest phenomenon to stir up controversy over the F-word. Free speech advocates celebrated while others said it was yet another sign of our culture's continuing moral deterioration when, in 1997, the United States Supreme Court ruled the Communications Decency Act of 1996 as an unconstitutional abridgement of free speech rights guaranteed under the First Amendment. The decision, in effect, struck down a law that would criminalize free speech in cyberspace, which is, without question, littered with inflammatory material that goes way beyond four-letter words.

Aside from the internet, verbal frankness has only continued to spread throughout popular culture, particularly the F-word, and rules allowing it and other vulgar expletives have softened -- largely due to demand trends.

"For quite a number of years it's been considered less offensive," says Sheidlower. "It doesn't shock people the way it did 30 years ago. Even publications like The Washington Post are printing it."

Of course, those "publications like The Washington Post" made the decision to print "fuck" as they were reporting on Vice President Cheney telling Leahy to go fuck himself. As Newsweek columnist Anna Quinden recently pointed out, back in 1962 the New York Times quoted President John F. Kennedy saying "My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it until now." As a result, The White House went ballistic, the press office complained, and the publisher of the Times apologized and the AP noted that other newspapers had found the quote unfit to print.

"That was then. This is @#*!%," Quindlen wrote.

Just A Word/ Not Just A Word
Times have indeed changed. But as many folks say, so what? I mean, it's just a word, right?

Wrong, says Bob Peters, president of Morality in Media, a national, not-for-profit, interfaith organization established in 1962 to combat obscenity and uphold decency standards in the media.

"It contributes to the vulgarization of our society," says Peters, who is the author of such works as Information Superhighway or Technological Sewer: What Will It Be? and Marketplace of Ideas or Anarchy: What Will Cyberspace Become? Peters cites a recent survey from the Barna Research Group that asked, among other things, how people felt about "allowing the use of the "F-word' on broadcast television?" One out of seven adults (15 percent) who responded felt that allowing the word on broadcast TV was acceptable, while 83 percent said it was inappropriate.

"I'm thankful most people seem to agree with me," Peters says. "It's not that you want to commit hara-kiri because you hear the F-word, but most of us don't want to hear it. And that's despite the fact that it's said more often in society than ever before."

Peters attributes this divergence to the fact that we live in a mass media culture that's dominated by a group of people with a worldview very different from the general population. "The world of New York and LA is a very different world than what the average American inhabits," Peters says. "For one thing, religion is important to most Americans. But among the entertainment industry, religion is not important, and morality certainly isn't a consideration in their lives either. They have no sense of restraint in the realm of sexuality and vulgarity."

Concerning Cheney's recent outburst, Peters says: "I wish he hadn't said it. I'm in no way offering a defense, but he didn't say it at 9pm in front of an audience of children. He said it to Leahy, some other adults overheard it, and because this is an election year, it got widely publicized. It was the choice of the media to publicize it all over the world. I try not to swear, but once in a while I get angry and say a bad word. I think that's what happened with Cheney. It's unfortunate, but I think most of us would agree that while cursing is wrong, we're glad it's not a capital offense because a lot of us would be dead."

But not everyone sees the F-word or other obscenities as some insidious presence that's ruining our society. "As we become more enlightened and intelligent, I think so-called dirty words -- and even the idea of what is a dirty word -- becomes more irrelevant," says Chuck Stone, a professor in the school of journalism and mass communications at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he also teaches a course in censorship.

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