Censored Redacted Bleep

Censored Redacted Bleep

A Modest Proposal

 

I call your attention to Rick Perry’s “N*****head Rock” scandal, which blew over, along with Rick Perry’s candidacy. I don’t think that Perry himself was racist, exactly; that dishonor goes to the landscape he inhabits. (Literally the landscape, with a slur painted upon a rock.) His insensitivity wasn’t specifically racist; he’s insensitive in general. He may or may not be a racist, but he’s definitely a jerk.

 It comes down to manners. In general it is prudent to not insult random strangers gratuitously; or, at least, not strangers who count. When people who didn’t count start to count, then suddenly some words reveal meanings previously ignored in polite company.

 This reminds me of a comment by Bertrand Russell, to the effect that ‘national character’ is really a description of that nation’s dominant political class; so that after any important political change, the national character will change too. Well, which slurs may be painted on rocks is part of the national character.

 Part of the problem is that slurs, insults, obscenities and other naughty words operate at a pre-rational level. People react whether they want to or not. Therefore we should rarely talk that way, partly in compassion for the mere humanity of our neighbors, and partly as strategic thrift in the use of a powerful weapon.

Another part of the problem is that you can’t talk about a naughty word without using the naughty word...

 ... or can you?

I have a modest proposal; that we use the word “bleep” as an all-purpose obscenity. Also “censored”, “suppressed”, “redacted”, “expletive deleted”, and so on. The idea is that censorship itself is an obscenity; it is inherently shameful; and therefore it and related words should themselves be considered vile cuss words, and used accordingly. For instance, I can refer to Perry’s rock as “Bleephead Rock”, and thus refer to the word (bleeped out above) without speaking it. 

“Bleep” has relatives and derivatives; censoring, redacter, bleepy, suppressed, and so on. Define them all as universally offensive. They comprise all slurs, especially the violent ones; and all gross-out references to body functions and body parts. Since these are generic cusswords, they leave their vileness up to the listener’s own filthy imagination.

 You may think that ‘bleep’ is just a censorious euphemism; and indeed part of its purpose is to enable us to discuss the ‘real’ cusswords without feeling their emotional effect. So ‘bleep’ is safe cussing. An ordinary dirty word is to ‘bleep’ as a bleep is to a bleep in a condom!

But I think that ‘bleep’ has real potential as a cussword in its own right. As Mark Twain noted, it’s not the words but the music. If you truly project ‘bleep’, then you get to be both a critic of hypocritical censorship, and a hypocritical censor! A bleeping win-win!

 Best of all, you can’t bleep out ‘bleep’; because if you bleep out a bleep, then all you get is… another bleeping bleep!

 Aw, expurgated! The suppressed redacter is all censored up! Expletive deleted!

 See how easy it is? And as for Perry... he can go bleep my classified!

 

Ambiguous Adjective Use

       Ambiguous Adjective Use

 

Consider the name “the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields”; a music orchestra I’ve often heard on public radio. The name is made of two noun phrases and an adjective phrase. The nouns are “Academy” and “Saint Martin”; the adjective phrase is “in the Fields”. What I always wonder is, which noun is the adjective describing? Is the Academy in the Fields? Or was Saint Martin in the Fields? Am I to envision a rural music school, or a meadow hermit?

          I call this “ambiguous adjective use”. That very phrase is self-descriptive, for which is ambiguous? The adjective or the use?

          Consider “dry cat food”. Which is dry, the food or the cats? Is it dry food for cats, or food for dry cats? And is “wet cat food” wet food for cats, or food for wet cats?

          If you feed wet food to a dry cat, or dry food to a wet cat, then in either case that would be both wet cat food, and dry cat food.

          Or take “fast car repair”. Is the repair fast, or the cars? And as before: fast repair of slow cars, and slow repair of fast cars, are both fast car repair and slow car repair.

          Is a “green apple bin” a green bin full of apples, or a bin full of green apples? Is a “big cat zoo” a zoo full of big cats, or a big zoo full of cats?

Can you think of other examples? It’s a “tricky word puzzle”; but which is tricky, the words or the puzzle?

No doubt grammarians have known about this for a long time. What do they call it?

Closely related to ambiguous adjective use is something that I call “anti-grammatical error speech”. It is either speech that’s against grammatical errors, or it’s error speech that’s against grammar.

Consider, for instance, an “anti-sex harassment force”. Is that a force that’s against sex harassment, or is it a harassment force that’s against sex?

Or take an “anti-voter fraud group”. Is that a group that’s against voter fraud, or is it a fraud group that’s against voters?

It comes down to hyphen placement; “anti-sex-harassment force” and “anti-voter-fraud group” versus “anti-sex harassment-force” and “anti-voter fraud-group”. But hyphens are silent.

 

Against Now Demands

Against Now Demands

 

I saw a poster in an elevator: “End Childhood Sexual Abuse Now!” I thought; a worthy cause unworthily served. What irritated me was that ‘now’. I looked at my watch; a few seconds had passed; yet childhood sexual abuse continued to exist in the universe. The poster had already failed!

I say it’s a trap. “Now” is supposed to denote passion, but really it denotes futility. Demand nothing ‘now’ unless you are a small child, or the thing you demand is a physical object in the hand of someone right in front of you. “Stop the Iraq War Now”; I saw that sign plenty of times in that longest-of-American wars.

Just delete the word ‘now’. End childhood sexual abuse! Stop the Iraq war! That’s passionate enough. Why jump off a time cliff just to prove your sincerity? Why even mention time? End the war in... ten years? Why not eleven? Or nine?

JFK made a time commitment; a man on the moon and back again by the end of the decade. The promise was kept because the task was definable and the opposition was nature, not man. Technical solutions allow time commitments; but not a ‘now’ until the button’s ready to be pushed.

Ultimately every ‘now’ demand - especially for abstractions - is the sin of hubris. It claims the divine power of instant transformation of reality.