Ex-President [Expletive Deleted]

 

From September 15, 1973...

Mike Stivic:
Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate!
Archie Bunker:
Don't say that no more, GODDAMN IT!
Edith Bunker:
You shouldn't swear like that.
Mike Stivic:
You shouldn't swear like that, Arch.
Edith Bunker:
Ever since this Watergate thing, it's GD this and GD that.
Archie Bunker:
That ain't swearing, Edith, GD. The first word there is God. How can that be a swear word? The most popular word in the Bible. The second word, that's damn, that's a perfectly good word, you hear that all the time, like they dammed the river to keep it from flooding, see? And even in the Bible you read where some guy is damned for cheating or stealing or having "insex" in the family. And who damned him? Who else? God. God damned him. Edith, beautiful words right out of the Holy Book. Don't show your ignorance!

The setting of linguistic standards for broadcast radio and television is a very fluid matter, and it runs in both directions - toward and away from absolute freedom of speech. In my high-school years, All in the Family pushed a lot of limits, using slang descriptions of ethnic groups and sexual orientations in the early 1970s that would be taboo on the air or in polite company in 2020. Their broadcast use of  the relatively mild expletive "Goddamn It!" also expanded freedom of televised speech in 1973, and even appended Archie's defense of the everyday expression of disapproval or exasperation. Slightly earlier, its use on the radio with the Grateful Dead's 1970 "Uncle John's Band" also broke broadcast barriers ("God damn well I declare | have you seen the like? | their walls are built of cannon balls | their motto is 'don't tread on me'" [a prophecy of the Tea Party?]) Now, however, because every mention of the words "God" and "damn" in combination will invoke the knee-jerk wrath of self-proclaimed guardians of American Fundamentalist Christianism, the networks have turned into cowards. As quoted in this NPR article "Bleeping Out Words" from 2009, the Standards & Practices department of All in the Family's old network CBS replied via email: "No gd on cbs." NBC also told NPR "As a general rule, we would not permit 'GD' to be used on our air. We would bleep one or the other...usually the first word." All of this network cowardice, despite the fact that the FCC does not consider "God damn" or its variants to be legally profane.

This is all to show that definitions of profanity change, so there is no reason that the "T-word" -- the family name of the person who is currently squatting in the White House for 70 more days -- should be heard on America's airwaves anymore. It can easily become the eighth word to join the Seven Words You Can't Say on TV, and I can stop using it here on my blog even though it's been used in almost every single post since 2015. Standards can change. The euphemisms You-Know-Who, or Mango Mussolini, or Adolf Twitler, or Cheeto Jesus, or Orange Julius Caesar, or Cadet Bone Spurs, or Putin's Puppet, or Putin's Puppy, or Short-Fingered Vulgarian, or Sore Loserman, or Diaper Don, or The Whiner In Chief, or Bunker Boy, or Trumpelthinskin, or The Groper In Chief, or The Dick Tater, or The ImPOTUS, or Tangerine Trash-Can Fire, or Lame Duck à l'Orange, or... , can all be used in place of the T-word without losing any meaning, or causing any confusion about the subject of one's sentence.

"109 Inconvenienced Passengers" is the Big Muslim-Ban Lie

As I type this there's another Republican spokesperson (Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida) on the PBS Newshour defending Donald Trump's Muslim Ban in the same terms used by all the Administration voices repeating the same strange justifications of a ill-conceived policy that many of them describe as "working out very nicely" despite obvious evidence to the contrary. The most annoying statement to me has been Sean Spicer repeating the strangely specific number of only 109 people inconvenienced at U.S. airports because they were in the air when the policy changed.

There are obviously tens of thousands of others stuck in foreign airports, refugee camps, intermediate waystations, or various stages of the multi-year vetting process who are now in limbo. Those are the people I heard described in the episode of This American Life I listened to in the car on the way home tonight. This hour of audio is so much more informative than any of the quick "insights" and factoids you'll hear in any of the televised back and forth from the usual suspects we're used to seeing on TV.

 (If the embedded This American Life player isn't showing up or working on your browser below, Click Here to go directly to Episode 609: "It's Working Out Very Nicely")

"Liberal" Cool? Of Course It Is (and always has been)!

In concert with this morning's post about an article in Salon about "The L Word," I also stumbled upon this story from Public Radio International's The Takeaway: "Is the Word 'Liberal' Becoming Cool Again in America?"



As with the article in the last post, both reassessments of the word were prompted by the Democratic Presidential Debate on CNN on Tuesday night -- a debate which was not (except for Jim Webb) running away from liberal ideals and chasing the Republicans toward the Right.

It's Keef, innit?

There is still something to be said for the excitement of picking up a physical recording on the day of its release, hoping to get to the record store (if you are lucky enough to still have a record store) before they sell out of their first shipment.

So far I've only heard the song Trouble that was released online, but I'm expecting the hour in the car after work today to be more fun than usual. Because? Well, because it's Keef, innit? Author of one of my favorite books of the last five years, and not a bad guitarist either.

On the way to work, I was lucky enough to hear this interview with Keith Richards on NPR's Morning Edition. Following the Rules of Keith, even the stringent indoor smoking regulations of NPR and New York City were temporarily suspended for this humorous, informative, and touching conversation.

Kurt Andersen talking to Paul Thomas Anderson about Thomas Pynchon and Inherent Vice

If you have a spare 40 minutes, or if you want to listen to something interesting while watching football with no sound, you can do worse than listening to this extended interview that was condensed to 13 minutes on Studio 360:

This might actually be good.

I hate to get my hopes up, but is it possible that Paul Thomas Anderson may actually succeed in bringing a Thomas Pynchon novel to the screen?
Here's the trailer released today:



And here's an interesting discussion on WNYC's Soundcheck in which John Schaefer and Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield talk about the music in the novel:

The Quote of the Day: "Visit the Caliphate Before the Caliphate Visits You"

It's not just NPR, but NPR is what I listen to when I'm not listening to music, so I have to blame them for giving over much too much of their Iraq coverage to the experts who were part of the fuck-up of the last decade. Having a uniform and brass on one's shoulder should not automatically qualify a person for opinions about war and peace, but NPR has been interviewing a lot of officers lately.

Here's the one I heard on the ride home this evening. At the 3'45" mark of this interview, Marine Colonel Gary Anderson (ret.) disqualifies himself by using the forbidden jargon "Boots on the Ground," but ten seconds later when Audie Cornish asks him if those "Boots" should be worn by Americans, he gives us our quote of the day:

"Well, I know it's not a popular thing. The American people think that they're uh tired of war, but uh they're gonna be a lot less tired when some of his [Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's] American passport holders come back and start shooting up shopping malls and things like that. I think the watchword that I would use is 'Visit the Caliphate Before the Caliphate Visits You.'" 

This "watchword" (another suspect bit of jargon) would fit perfectly coming from a mouth of a Bush Administration cabinet member and could have been written as one the publicity tropes coming out of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) in 2002-2003.