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Showing posts from January, 2010

Offensive Words

As Get Out! readers know, I haven’t shied away from posting some stories in the mag with four-letter words ( How to Sh*t in the Woods , If you Can’t Duck it, F&@# It ). Most readers don’t seem to have strong feelings about it one way or another. Some wrote to compliment the stories and a few wrote to let me know they were offended by these words. My favorite was someone accusing me of not having the vocabulary to do better. I thought about culling the site for words that he probably wouldn’t know how to define and e-mail the list to him, but I’m too lazy and disinterested to do that. I am interested, however, in language and in the idea of offensive words. George Carlin has already said most of the good stuff on this topic, but I am intrigued about how we as a culture make certain words taboo. They are, after all, just words. (I am rubber, you are glue, bounced off me and stuck on you!) When I informally polled my friends on this topic, the only ones with concerns were parents – th