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Jon Carroll - January 13, 2004 - ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt:
Oh, good, it's loony season again. Just when you thought that life was going to get all depressing and serious, a fun nutball comes along to brighten all our days.
This week's clown (and I mean no disrespect to clowns) is Rep. Doug Ose, R-Sacramento, who has introduced a bill before Congress to expressly and definitely ban from the airwaves the seven words that all decent people agree are the worst words in the whole world. The one I can print in this newspaper is "piss."
I bet you can guess what the six others are. (You bring it up to six by including that one and mother-that-one, plus the-other-one-sucker). Ose wants to ban these words, and you already know what the words are. Surely there's some kind of barn door/stolen horse thing going on.
Ose was very serious, however. "I don't want to be sitting there when a guy blurts something out over TV and have my daughters ask me what those words mean."
Why is it always daughters with these guys? Is it OK for sons to hear the vulgarism for rectal aperture, but not for daughters? I suspect Ose has not spent much time around girls -- they can be nasty-minded little beasts. They still believe in human perfectibility, though, which is why they're always welcome at my dinner table.
I speak as a father who did have to explain those words to his daughters. It was not that hard. I did not feel I needed the protection of the law. My granddaughter, who has yet to reach her third birthday, uses "poop" as a standard narrative device.
"OK, the duck and the goose and the elephant are all inside the circus tent. What do they do now?"
"They poop!"
Now, if I were asked by my granddaughter the meaning of "coprophagy" or "frottage," I might blush a little and dig my toe into the sand. But Ose just wants to ban the words we've already heard. Gee, is it election time already?
Also: Surely fathers should want to be the ones to field their kids' questions. We don't want our kids learning the facts of life in cafeterias and gymnasiums. We want to be able to explain that making love is a beautiful thing between a man and a woman, except when viewed from the apartment across the street; and that it is necessary to remove the poisons from our body, and . .. say, why don't you kids go play Twister now?
No, wait -- don't do that. Twister leads to impure thoughts. Did you know there was a picture of Satan on every Twister box? Our lawmakers are asleep at the switch once again.
For full column and comments on Deadheads: Carroll
Oh, good, it's loony season again. Just when you thought that life was going to get all depressing and serious, a fun nutball comes along to brighten all our days.
This week's clown (and I mean no disrespect to clowns) is Rep. Doug Ose, R-Sacramento, who has introduced a bill before Congress to expressly and definitely ban from the airwaves the seven words that all decent people agree are the worst words in the whole world. The one I can print in this newspaper is "piss."
I bet you can guess what the six others are. (You bring it up to six by including that one and mother-that-one, plus the-other-one-sucker). Ose wants to ban these words, and you already know what the words are. Surely there's some kind of barn door/stolen horse thing going on.
Ose was very serious, however. "I don't want to be sitting there when a guy blurts something out over TV and have my daughters ask me what those words mean."
Why is it always daughters with these guys? Is it OK for sons to hear the vulgarism for rectal aperture, but not for daughters? I suspect Ose has not spent much time around girls -- they can be nasty-minded little beasts. They still believe in human perfectibility, though, which is why they're always welcome at my dinner table.
I speak as a father who did have to explain those words to his daughters. It was not that hard. I did not feel I needed the protection of the law. My granddaughter, who has yet to reach her third birthday, uses "poop" as a standard narrative device.
"OK, the duck and the goose and the elephant are all inside the circus tent. What do they do now?"
"They poop!"
Now, if I were asked by my granddaughter the meaning of "coprophagy" or "frottage," I might blush a little and dig my toe into the sand. But Ose just wants to ban the words we've already heard. Gee, is it election time already?
Also: Surely fathers should want to be the ones to field their kids' questions. We don't want our kids learning the facts of life in cafeterias and gymnasiums. We want to be able to explain that making love is a beautiful thing between a man and a woman, except when viewed from the apartment across the street; and that it is necessary to remove the poisons from our body, and . .. say, why don't you kids go play Twister now?
No, wait -- don't do that. Twister leads to impure thoughts. Did you know there was a picture of Satan on every Twister box? Our lawmakers are asleep at the switch once again.
For full column and comments on Deadheads: Carroll
