THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506210071
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: HE SAID, SHE SAID
SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY & DAVE ADDIS
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
KERRY SAYS:
While you were on vacation a shocking thing happened, Dave. Our editor circulated a memo asking newsroom personnel to watch their language.
Seems some non-journalists were loitering by the elevators recently when a reporter let loose with some . . . ahh . . . extremely colorful language.
The poor bystanders were horrified.
My first reaction to this editor's encyclical was a snicker.
You venture into a locker room, you're gonna see bare butts. You walk into a newsroom you're going to hear cussing. It's one of life's ugly truths.
It's been that way ever since I was a copy boy - yes, Dave I used to be a boy - 20 years ago.
Back in those dark ages, things were a little different in newsrooms. The air was so thick with cigarette smoke you had to have night-vision glasses to find your desk. You could hardly hear yourself think for the noisy typing. And there were men. Lots of men. And boy, could those guys swear.
You were there, Dave. You know I learned from the best.
Today newsrooms are a lot cleaner.
Smokers have been banished to the parking lot. Noisy typewriters have been replaced by quiet computers. And there are many more women around - not just on the fashion and society beats.
But, oh, the language. It's just as dirty as ever.
And its not just here. Seems everywhere you go these days people are using language once reserved for defensive linemen.
Which brings to mind the words of one of the first feminists I ever met. Her name was Elisabeth Russell, an English professor at the small Pennsylvania college I attended. She taught ``Women In Literature,'' and, naturally, there were no men in the class.
One day a classmate let loose with a four-letter expletive. It wasn't the S word. It wasn't the D word, either.
Professor Russell turned her icy stare on the young woman and in her clear, crisp British accent said: ``I've always believed that equality with men should mean we bring them up to our level. Not that we sink to theirs.''
Well, ladies, let's face it. We've sunk. We're right down there with the guys. Proving we can do everything as badly as they do. Including reducing the beautiful English language, with its 600,000 words, to the linguistic equivalent of a locker room.
You have any bleeping thoughts to add to that, Dave?
DAVE SAYS:
I'm kinda glad I was gone when the S-word hit the fan, Kerry. I'm a real hypocrite on the subject, and I hate being a hypocrite. I don't like the air around me turned blue with profanity, but I can light it up with the best of them when properly provoked. And it's embarrassing.
I remember an honest-to-cookies mob of Girl Scouts was touring the newsroom once when a couple of my colleagues started to mother-this and mother-that.
The troop leader was horrified, but the kids, from the looks in their eyes, seemed to enjoy it. They sensed that they were seeing the real thing, like that moment at the zoo when the cute little tiger cubs start tearing up hunks of raw meat for dinner.
Does all this sound any worse when coming from a woman? I don't think so. It's a question of timing and context.
I've worked for two female bosses in recent years who were prone to swearing. One of them tossed expletives into her speech as carelessly as you'd scatter cheese on a pizza. It sounded fakey and vulgar, like she was trying too hard to prove she was as tough as the boys. Nobody took her seriously.
The other woman would stoop to gutterspeak only when gentler attempts to get her quarry's attention had failed. But, when agitated, she could manipulate a certain four-letter word the way a concertmaster manipulates the strings of a Stradivarius. She could use it as a noun, a verb, an adverb, a gerund, and, when in especially rare form, a past participle.
You tended to pay attention.
Maybe that's what Bob Dole was trying to get across, in his ever-artless manner, when he jumped on the TV and movie industries for pushing crudity beyond acceptable bounds. When overdone, it loses all its shock value.
I missed Dole's lecture, too, but I heard a bit of it on the BBC one night in a little seaside town on Israel's northern coast. I thought about it as I turned off the radio and went out for a late dinner.
The Israelis are by no means a nation of prudes. They can be tough, aggressive, lusty and profane when the situation calls for any of those virtues.
But, weird as it seems given the occasional outbreaks of terrorism and the constant presence of automatic weapons, there's a gentility to the street life there. You could walk the seaside promenade of that town at midnight and see whole families out strolling, confident that they would not be bothered by petty sidewalk thugs or 100-decibel shock-rock booming from the passing cars.
I don't know if toning down the blue notes around the newsroom is a small step toward recapturing that sort of civility in our culture, Kerry, but I'm willing to muzzle my own jaw if you think it would help.
by CNB