Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 20, 1994                   TAG: 9407280014
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ANOTHER (EXPLETIVE DELETED) COLUMN

These days, they put "expletive" in brackets. Thus, Wild Bruce Strongworth, the fullback for the losing Hartsville Rockets, tells a sportswriter:

"We'd hev beat theah [expletives] if they hadn't bought th' [expletive] oh-ficials. Ah hope Ah nevah hev tuh cum back tuh this [expletive] place.

"Besides, theah [expletive] cleats wuz illiggle."

Old geezers who lived through Watergate remember the ultimate use of the "expletive" routine. The late Richard M. Nixon cussed like a very angry paratrooper - which was the least of his sins in the eyes of many. This language was in the famous White House tapes.

When the tapes were released, American journalists shielded their fellow Americans from the fact that their president used stronger words than "fudge" by the phrase "expletive deleted."

(For some reason - although we were on the edge of the computer age in print journalism - we used parentheses instead of brackets. We were using typewriters then, and it may have been that nobody knew how to make a bracket.)

There was a lot of reporting about those tapes, and "expletive deleted" became legend. A fictional example of a conversation in the Oval Office between Nixon and Henry Kissinger illustrates this technique:

President: Good morning, Henry, you old (expletive deleted). Have a hit of this (expletive deleted) coffee and take a load off your (expletive deleted) feet.

Kissinger: Yah, mein president. I haf been wondering vy you effer made zese (expletive deleted) recordings in zee first place. I zink you vill haff some trouble convincing people you are not a (expletive deleted) crook.

The point here is that you can enrich your private lives by deleting expletives. You can, for example, curse without being profane.

You go to your friendly men's store for a belt and this guy eyeballs you as a 46, and you say: "What in the (expletive deleted) do you mean? I've been a (expletive deleted) 36 for 40 (expletive deleted) years."

You commit the sin of pride and go home with a 36-inch belt that wouldn't fit around the dog, and your wife, who has never been very good at cussing, says: "Why in (expletive deleted) did you buy a (expletive deleted) belt that wouldn't have fit you in 1954, you (expletive deleted) you?"