Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET by MARGARET DICKSON THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET Whoa! #?!%@*& Eruptions Lovers and fi erce protectors of the English language, they must be reeling over the highly public expletive eruptions by three politicians of national stature in recent days. In case you have been cloistered on vacation or simply at home glued to your air-conditioning unit, here is what was said and by whom and in what are generally considered G-rated venues. Up & Coming Weekly is a general readership publication, so I will do a bit of clean up here, but you will get the point. First, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, long noted as a straight shooter but not generally a profane one, called a lawmaker with whom he disagreed "one arrogant "blankedy blank" at a town hall meeting last month. He has some even friskier words for Bruce Springsteen's political leanings in the current issue of The Atlantic, but no one is going to make you read that article if you choose not to. Then came the mayors of Philadelphia and New York. Michael Nutter of Philadelphia was reacting at a news conference to a 4th of July shooting incident near his city's offi cial celebration site. He said bluntly that he would not allow Philadelphia's image to be tarnished by "some little a______ 16-year-old." Most surprising to me, though, was this comment by the ever suave, ever-urbane Michael Bloomberg. Presiding over the offi cial weigh-in before New York's traditional 4th of July hot dog eating contest, the Mayor was apparently irritated by pun-laden prepared remarks handed to him by aides. Many puns into it, he chuckled and asked the crowd assembled at City Hall, "Who wrote this s___?" My mother and grandmother have got to be spinning in their graves. culture, politicians feel free to express themselves in profane ways. I honestly do believe that, in aping the coarseness of popular culture, people in public life are really dragging us into a discourse of fang and claw." Well said, Mr. Baker. I "My sense is: Because they want to appear to be in tune with popular agree. Are we really prepared to have our elected political leaders publicly swearing like sailors on shore leave? whatever reasons, that using the lowest common denominator in public was the way they wanted to represent themselves and the offices to which they have been elected. It could have been different. What if Governor Christie had called the lawmaker who offended him a "son of a mongrel?" Can anyone, Democrat or Republican, imagine President Obama or Mitt Romney saying anything close to these remarks, each made in a public setting with cameras and microphones galore? So what the heck is going on here? Each of these men is a veteran politician and offi ceholder. What standards have loosened to allow them to feel such language is appropriate within the contexts in which they used it? We all are exposed to this in our daily lives, and it is often used in entertainment programming, but are we really prepared to have our elected political leaders publicly swearing like sailors on shore leave? Asked about the recent episodes of political potty-mouth, Rutgers University political scientist Ross K. Baker had this to say. The entire little brouhaha — for this little fl ap is a mere blip in what promises to be a long, painful and ugly election year — also got me thinking about what my mother and grandmother might say about this. Both were proper but neither was a prude, and I do not think they would be as offended by the words themselves as by the lack of imagination and laziness of intellect that underlies just tossing out the same old words used so often and so carelessly that they have really lost their punch. None of these words would have generated any reaction in most modern-day settings. The only reason they are noteworthy at all is because of who said them and in what situation. These three leaders decided, for What if Mayor Nutter had referred to the teenager as "a sniveling, pusillanimous juvenile delinquent?" Given the occasion and the relentless puns, what if Mayor Bloomberg — wearing a blue tie, had asked, "Who wrote this doggie drivel?" I suspect people who care about language would have given them credit for trying, curious people would have headed for dictionaries and most of us simply would not have noticed or cared. We would have been spared, though, several cycles of media speculation about the further degradation of language and of popular culture, although I am coming to suspect that is indeed where we are heading. MARGARET DICKSON, Con- tributing Writer, COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM JULY 11-17, 2012 UCW 5