Abuse Words and Watch What Happens

Respect your readers

Words matter. Writers be aware! Beware of writers (and speakers) who intentionally offend people by use of their vulgar speech. These offensive words are labeled as “bleeps” that are eliminated from use on news stations. In fact, listeners and readers often are warned in advance that the content may be offensive. Spit out distasteful and obscene offensive words in writing.

Warning readers about offensive content

Do they really know what they are implying by that deleted term? A high-pitched sound that hurts the ears is the same word used for replacing an obscene or vulgar expletive. Bleep is defined as

a short high-pitched sound (as from electronic equipment) and 2 — used in place of an obscene or vulgar expletive.

One of the most common words used in the current culture in the USA refers to rape. It is used in titles by writers who “want to get your attention” and by politicians who have included this type of talk regularly into their vocabulary. Supposedly, they are unaware of the impact it has on the recipients because it has unwittingly become part of their modus operandi.

Words have meaning.

What used to be reserved only in the environment of men’s shop talk or “soldier speak” is now in the 21st Century so prolific among students, even as young as elementary school. Men did not talk “that way” around women and children. They had more respect around their mothers and grandmothers. Children were threatened with, “I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.” Some actually did that to thwart the increase of swearing by their sons. Where did they learn that filthy language was permissible and acceptable in public?

Decency demands boundaries.

Boundaries of respect and decency

Private speech caused that delineation to promote duplicity among men who used cursing and swearing on the job but might have refrained from usage at home. However, that spread to public media outlets of all kinds to become more acceptable as time elapsed. Gutter talk became mainstream talk. Boundaries have been breached. The flood gates of vulgar words started overflowing into the stream of culture.

Boundaries in behavior protect and prevent sewage from overflowing out of the mouths of those who are promoting distasteful and disrespectful words. More than any physical weapon, words cut to the bone. These writers seem to try to be so rude by fitting in with the culture that they become irrelevant — even to the point of being toxic and are eventually thrown out as rotten, unpalatable, inedible.

Painful speech can be very damaging where the message is lost in the sludge of garbage talk. Even if they think that these slang words are ok now and are “commonly used” in schools, publications, on videos and TV, they need to stop it. This is tantamount to child abuse. Verbal and emotional abuse is real when peppered with expletives that go deeper than surface wounds. The power of words and the disrespect for others has emboldened crude hate speech. It spreads like wildfire and destroys the personhood of individuals.

Vulgar expletives are unnecessary.

Delete delete delete for decency

There is a need to let go of the ugly stuff of blaming put-downs that lie beneath the surface of critical labels. Peppering their writing with written *bleeps tends to emphasize an unpleasant emotional state and unempathetically run over their readers. What they (the readers) heard is not the same as what they (the writers) might have been intended.

They may perceive themselves as empathetic, yet they are often more concerned about their own image of being right or telling what they perceive as their truth. Meanness of intent resurfaces as they convey — through the words they say —prideful self-patronizing.

Sarcastic bleeps boomerang

These bleeps and sarcastic remarks only cut and divide readers. Is that their intent — to divide people? Are these writers trying to show how obscene and “authentic” they can be? Their insensitivity pushes a significant number of readers in their audience to unsubscribe and walk away.

Readers get frustrated. They get angry. Anger is a signal, a warning light that something needs to change. On the dashboard of a car, the red light that indicates “STOP, something’s wrong,” could mean to add water to the radiator. If that warning is ignored, continuing to drive causes the engine to burn up from overheating. Either writers need to pay attention to the tension of overheated words or pay the price of rebuilding the engine of communication.

Anger also pushes people away. Obscene swearing does not help and only reflects an inflamatory, thoughtless, self-promoting writer. When the boundaries are breached and the anger erupts, when good men do nothing, corruption of language erodes democracy and decency.

Do they even care

If these writers do not care about the outcome and vomit their viewpoint, how can they expect any positive results other than the regurgitation of disrespect for them? Readers reject worthless diatribes. What may be some sort of notoriety for a blip on the bleep screen of best sellers, these writers lose in the long run. No classics here.

Garbage in garbage out

Some have noted that the TV shows can be like having a sewer pipe pouring into a house. Would you allow a bully to enter? That’s where a clicker to change channels — or turn it off — is a choice for healthy judgment. The same principle is true for reading articles on the Internet or books in a bookstore.

• Readers can drop it.
• Readers don’t buy it.
• Readers can choose not to buy into — or walk into — the quicksand of filthy language.

Reality has it’s limits

Irving Kristol, born in New York to Jewish immigrants, wrote an essay supporting censorship of obscenity in the New York Times called “Pornography, Obscenity, and the Case for Censorship.” Censorship is good for a healthy society, not bad. Public Decency Laws need to be balanced for public consumption. The other extreme is unhealthy as portrayed in the movie The Book Thief and other historical accounts where books are banned and burned. There is a healthy middle ground that has been lost.

Writers and readers CTA

Restoring order and democracy is the right and responsibility of citizens. That means several specific actions now. Identify the audience. That’s a principle of writing well. Just because some may be using vulgarities that seem to be acceptable language today does not mean that writers have to stoop to their level of sludgey language usage.

Muddy sludge clogs the mind. Instead, standing up for good health is honorable and necessary. Standing against unhealthy garbage words that are offered up to eat regularly is the call to action (CTA) for both writers and readers. It is time to preserve the consumers who chew and digest the information presented on the buffet of written and spoken words.