Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That's what they told us they were, remember? "That's a bad word." "Awwww." There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions. And words . . .

I mean, I think the word fuck is an important word. It's the beginning of life, and yet it's a word we use to hurt one other, quite often. And uh, people much wiser than I have said, "I'd rather have my son watch a film with two people making love than two people trying to kill one other." And I of course agree. I wish I knew who said it first, and I agree with that.

"George Carlin" wrote:

Seven words you can say on the radio: Kill, murder, assassinate, slaughter, butcher, slay, massacre. But Carlin's seven words you can't say on the radio, or on a blog like this one--two are anatomical references, two are references to the way our bodies process food and liquid, three are sexual references. (The list is actually much longer than seven words these days, but Carlin's general point still stands.) And yeah, the words are vulgar and offensive--whatever that means--but the ideas behind them aren't. And while it's understandable that content-neutral regulation means that only words can be restricted, not ideas, it has created a culture of euphemism that says (for example) that it's racist to use the n-word but less racist to favor policies that make real life harder for black folks, or that it's sexist to use the b-word but not sexist to favor policies that make real life harder for women, or that it's homophobic to use anti-gay slurs but not homophobic to favor policies that make real life harder for lesbians and gay men.

War also illustrates what Carlin was talking about. Shock and awe, decapitation strikes, smart bombs, laser-guided missiles, special ops--these are all very technical ways of saying that we're killing people by sending pieces of metal through parts of their bodies at a high rate of speed, or blowing their bodies apart, or burning them to death. All the lovely little euphemisms that are used to describe this process are never considered offensive, but God help us all if somebody uses the wrong word to describe how they evacuated their bowels this morning.

It's a testament to the power of profanity that Carlin never quite topped the level of notoriety he achieved with "Seven Words," try though he did. In the 80s, he discussed bodily functions. In the 90s, he spent more time on religion. In the 00s, he talked about death and the human capacity for cruelty and sadism (including his own!). Sometimes he genuinely went overboard and said something nasty and indefensible. But none of this ever generated as much controversy as "Seven Words"--and even our memories of "Seven Words" are about the fact that it contains the seven words, not about the argument that it makes. Our enduringly shallow reaction to "Seven Words" proves its potency as an argument, and has established him as a weird kind of prophet. I don't know if that's what he had in mind, but I guess it'd explain why he grew the beard.

"Tom Head" wrote:

Maybe because to a lot of people (me included) sex should be something exciting and new, and sacred. You have none of that when it's glorified all over the place, no matter how you argue it.

"Formo" wrote:

That doesn't explain why it's somehow okay to show murder, rape, and mutilation, though. Isn't human life supposedly sacred?

"Nonstopdrivel" wrote: