Inviting an artist such as Cee Lo, whose signature song is
“Fuck You” and expecting G-rated, milk toast, lukewarm entertainment is a bit
like expecting the same from a comedy concert with George “Seven Dirty Words”
Carlin.
Had Carlin been invited to this year’s Riverbend and
actually appeared, I would definitely
have wanted to see that.
It was in late grammar school or else junior high after
hearing repeated lectures about “vulgarity” from various adults, sometimes
directed specifically as me sometimes not, that I actually looked the word, or
rather the word from which it is derived (vulgar), up. The meaning of “vulgar” is “coming from the
common folk”.
Since I knew even then that there were Latin-based words
with the exact same meaning (for example, the first four of Carlin’s seven words
would be defecate, urinate, copulate, and vagina), I strongly suspected that
the reason these words were shunned in “polite” society was their origin in the
Anglo-Saxon tongue vis-à-vis the Norman French tongue imported across the
Channel from the Continent.
I wasn’t able to confirm my suspicions beyond a reasonable
doubt until I was at UTC (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) and had
access to the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, which included “those”
words. Sure enough, they are all rooted
in the Germanic languages of the fifth and sixth centuries invaders of the Isle
of Britain as opposed to that of the later eleventh century Norman (and Breton
and Flemish) invaders of the eleventh century speaking the Latin-based French
language who became the ruling upper class.
I have noticed that in the past couple of decades quite a
number of British (Yiddish too, by the way) “swear words” on prime time TV here
in the USA that across the water are considered equally impolite and profane as
Carlin’s “seven dirty words. But rather
than being outraged most of those who would be shocked and awed at use of
American-style vulgarity respond with “Oh, how cute!” since they’re “British”.
So, the bias against these words had more to do with
pretentious snobbery than the actual meaning of the words themselves. In response to the protest against this
conclusion that it is not the words themselves but how they are used, I ask why
then the focus on these words when there are so much more hurtful ways of
speaking to others that cause much more harm?
A bit hypocritical, wouldn’t you say?
To some people, though, appearance, rather than reality, is
what matters. I seem to recall a rather
noted historical figure who condemned such an attitude and find it ironic that
most people throwing stones at Cee Lo probably believe they are acting in his
name.
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