Double Hockey Sticks

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Hey,

On most lazy Sundays, usually involving a hangover, there’s nothing better than laying on the couch and watching a random movie. Other than TBS having some hellbent obsession with playing “The Help” as many times as humanly possible, there’s usually a good movie that you can turn on and enjoy without exerting much brainpower. Except of course if they’ve been edited and dubbed to remove profanity.

I don’t want to bore you by going over the origins of profanity or the sacrilegious practice of blasphemy. I only want to bring them up to pose the question “Why do we still view profanity as bad?” I’m not talking about racial slurs or comments that are meant to be derogatory. Although, I’m torn as to whether to allow derogatory slurs that are meant to be accurate portrayals of the past, in movies such as “The Green Mile” or “Django Unchained”. But, I’m referring to John Connor teaching the Terminator to call someone a dickwad, or censoring The Rock saying “Fuck yeah” in “Central Intelligence”. Are we really at risk of ruining society because of a few words in a comedy?

Why are we pretending that people don’t use profanity in their daily lives? And even if you don’t use the actual profane words, if the intent remains but you change the words it still fricken’ counts in my opinion. The insistence on avoiding profanity has created some pretty clever innuendos, but I don’t think the world is worse off by allowing George Carlin’s seven dirty words to creep into our vocabulary.

While writing this newsletter, I was listening to my new favorite song of 2020, which is Trey Lewis’ “Dicked Down in Dallas”. I’m aware that the song’s vulgarity is part of its unique charm, but I’m wondering how this song will altered in order to be added to mainstream country radio rotation. I can’t help but wonder why it needs to be edited at all. I’m not going to pretend that TikTok pre-teens don’t know the true lyrics of the song, and despite what Spotify tells you, no one actively searches out edited versions of Young Dolph songs. We’re giving these words power that shouldn’t have any, and we’re not being truly honest with ourselves as a result.

And if you’re not down with that, I’ve got two words for you.