Profanity.  It’s What’s for Supper.

Have you noticed that our nation has developed a serious case of potty-mouth?   Many Americans think they make a big impression on others by punctuating their speech with F-bombs, dirty put-downs, scatological pronouns and just mindless ugliness.

I began to notice the change about a decade ago.  As a musician I spend a fair amount of time in bars (the only time you will see me in one is when I am paid to be there.)  These joints are places where people are hard at work trying to impress each other, and inhibition is nonexistent.  It seems to have started with the young women.  I was startled to hear how so many of the twenty-something aged girls talked to each other – even those who came to the bar straight from their high-class professional jobs.  I recall one group who, I swear, had an ongoing contest to see who could drop the most F-bombs in one sentence.  It reminded me of the hot-selling New Jersey T-shirts that boldly read, “F you, you F-ing F!”

I had seen enough East Coast mafia movies, and heard enough gangsta rap that the language wasn’t completely foreign to me.  But these were girls – otherwise attractive, presumably intelligent young ladies.  And they had no clue that their choice of adjectives made them repulsive to any civilized human being.

Of course they weren’t trying to impress me – I long ago became invisible to young ladies, unless they need help changing a tire.  But I can’t understand how filthy language makes them appealing to each other.

The next group to jump on the “Trash Talk Express” was the political left.  After a long string of electoral defeats they decided an image change was in order.  Ordinary victimhood just wasn’t working consistently – they had to take the offensive and BE offensive.  Talking like sailors makes them sound tough and edgy, right?  Why stop at calling everybody racist when F-ING RACIST is just so much more descriptive?

Lately the left-wing politicians are proudly pronouncing profanity at the podium, and it’s no accident – they believe it helps their audience relate to them as “real people”.

This tactical change by the left has had a profound effect on American youth, who matriculate from our public Democrat schools as leftist automatons.  Potty-mouth syndrome has spread virally to the millennials-and-younger.  Ask your junior-high kid what it means when he texts that it was hot AF.

And unfortunately many of my right-wing friends have begun to fight fire with fire.  Or fecal matter with fecal matter.  The quality of articulation on my Facebook timeline is in a toilet-swirl of decline.

Now, I’m no prude.  I don’t need a safe zone to protect me from offense, and I certainly can’t claim that there are no expletives in my lexicon.  Some of the songs my band performs are, well, not squeaky-clean.  But I, for one, would appreciate a move back toward more civil discourse.

Now, if I can just get my seven-year old grandson to stop calling everybody “poopy-head”.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

The cow’s giving kerosene,
Kid can’t read at seventeen,
The words he knows are all obscene,
But – it’s all right.  I will get by!

Touch of Grey – Grateful Dead