Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
I do not know about you all but I am disgusted daily at what passes as normal and correct language. Swear words are the normal. I understand having been many years military and law enforcement that swearing kinda comes with the territory. I am guilty. However, I did not swear in front of my daughter. I did not use bad language in front of women or elderly folk out of respect. I sure as hell did not swear in front of my parents! My mother would not have tolerated it for a second and that wooden spoon would surely have been inflicting a large amount of hurt to my rear end!
Many of you know that since I retired from the sheriffs office as a deputy sheriff, I drive Uber most days part time. Mornings and early afternoon only. This gets me out of the house and gives me a good reason to get up and going early. It also allows my beloved best friend and wife an opportunity to have some time for herself!! Men – you understand that. 😂😂
Anyway, I digress. Language today! I have noticed that many people and that is young and old cannot talk anymore! They text!! Also apparently you cannot talk without the word “like” becoming every second or third word! Then there is the swearing. I have picked up young 13/14 year old girls to take them home or to school as they were late, and they will sit in the back graphically describing without shame, their latest sexual encounters. This in front of a 66 year old stranger and a male. No shame. Interspersed between the graphic sexual talk without innuendo, comes the F word and often the C word. The latter I have always abhorred. I hear them talk to their parents using the F word among many “like” words as they are unable to actually use real words.
I understand that we are in a different era but decency is decency. Morals are morals. Ethics are ethics. We are sadly not seeing any.
It appears that despite spending more per child on education than any other country we are not able to get kids to string more than a few words together all of which have the word like before and after them!! Let alone spell those words.
These insults are from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words, and imaginative writing was king:
1. “He had delusions of adequacy ” Walter Kerr
2. “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”- Winston Churchill
3. “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. – Clarence Darrow
4. “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”-William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
5. “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
6. “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas
7. “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain
8. “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” – Oscar Wilde
9. “I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.” -George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
10. “Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.” – Winston Churchill, in response
11. “I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here” – Stephen Bishop
12. “He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright
13. “I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb
14. “He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” – Samuel Johnson
15. “He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. – Paul Keating
16. “He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” – Forrest Tucker
17. “Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” – Mark Twain
18. “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” – Mae West
19. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde
20. “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.” – Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
21. “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder
22. “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I’m afraid this wasn’t it.” – Groucho Marx
23. The exchange between Winston Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, “If you were my husband I’d give you poison.” He said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”
24. “He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” – Abraham Lincoln
25. “There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” — Jack E. Leonard
26. “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” — Thomas Brackett Reed
27. “He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.” — James Reston (about Richard Nixon)
© Fred Brownbill 2022
