“Sad Old Bollocks From the 1950s”

I was going to open my mouth on the swearing "issue," but Fitz has handled it more nicely than I would have. Instead, I'll just mooch off Times of London critic Giles Coren, of whose journalistic antics I can never get enough:

Old folk will always tell you that swearing and rudeness is a sign of ignorance, that it debases the language. That you should think — even count — to ten before you speak. But that’s sad old bollocks from the 1950s. Language is so moribund now that a bit of directness, a bit of old-fashioned free-association, can have a new and awesome power.

At the bottom end of the linguistic scale, kids are all, ‘like, innit, bruv, you know what I’m sayin…’ to the point where they are clearly not saying anything, and have reclaimed the condition of grunting primates that we took a million years to evolve from. And at the ‘top’ end, in political debate and in the media, it’s all peri- phrasis and euphemism. It’s all: ‘let me make one thing clear’; it’s all ‘rafts of measures’ and ‘step-changes’; it’s all ‘can I assist you at all?’ and ‘somewhat inebriated after a number of libations…’.

And you just want to shout, ‘F—k!’ And if you do, it seems, people really sit up and listen.

I'm Proud to Be Famous for Being Rude [Spectator]