The late comic genius George Carlin had one such very famous, or should I say infamous, list. Just to refresh your memory, they are: Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and tits.
Apparently, in some archaic past that many of you reading will not remember, you weren’t allowed to say these words on TV. Or was it the radio? Maybe at the time George Carlin sat down to pen this rift, it was about words you couldn’t say on the radio. Because times have certainly changed. This was abundantly evident at yesterday’s vice presidential debates, as some words from George Carlin’s list have exchanged places with words that were once part of everyday vernacular, but are now very, very dirty.
Let’s put this into perspective, people – I cleared m whole Thursday night schedule for yesterday’s debates.
I cannot remember a time in my entire existence (and I did live through two Bush presidencies in my adulthood, and I certainly had opinions on that) that I knew about VP debates in the first place, much less plopped in front of the TV at 7 pm just to make damn sure (more on “damn” later) that I did not miss this TV event.
And make no mistake, for yesterday was a television event. Bigger than Miss Universe, the World Series of Baseball and the Superbowl combined.
Because, seriously, who outside the USA actually watches the “World” (WTF??) Series of Baseball or the Superbowl?
That’s right: nobody.
And yet, last night, the whole world tuned in, hoping to catch the next potential (probable?..) leader of the planet’s current Superpower butcher names of important people and places (which she did), mix up the leader of one country with another, display her ignorance about the economy, foreign policy and basic history, and just generally make an ass out of herself.
Which she didn’t, to her credit, so I think Ms. Palin can safely add the following to her somewhat scant list of Reasons Why I Am Qualified to be Your President: may not contain one solitary original thought in that pretty little head, but can parrot back entire swaths of party talking points and is every bit as adept as the big boys at evading serious questions while keeping ridicule of self and affiliated party at a minimum.
Way to go, girl!
But I digress, as usual.
What struck me about the content of yesterday’s debates were the talking points that Palin kept hammering in, messages carefully designed to inspire a strong reaction from the people listening, much like George Carlin’s selection of gasp-worthy words.
I believe America should update Carlin’s list for the new millennium since “fuck” and “shit” and “cocksucker” have become about as offensive to the senses as chicken noodle soup.
So here they are, the seven words you cannot say in America – or if you must, say at your own risk:
1. Liberal
2. Regulate
3. Spending (when used in conjunction with “government”)
4. Surrender (when America does it)
5. Feminism (and all of its derivatives)
6. Taxes (when it comes after “increase”)
7. Damn. Specifically, Goddamn.
There you have it, the updated list of words offensive to Americans, if Sarah Palin and co. are right. Because every answer Palin gave yesterday was not designed to answer the question (by her own admission), but to make sure Americans understand that under the Palin/McCain ticket, there will be no liberalism/regulation/increased spending/taxation of any kind/surrender under any circumstance/a place for women as decision makers as opposed to handmaidens/use of the word “damn” ever again, GOSH DARNIT!!!
Can I ask you something, my dear American friends?
Did Sarah Palin realize the she was addressing adults last night? Has she been hanging around kids so much that it has affected her speech patterns? And though we may like people who like kids, do we really want a Vice President saying things like:
“Well, Mr. Kim Jung Il, if you don’t dismantle your nukular program right now, hockey moms of America will NOT stand for it, gosh darn it!”
Because that’s the image she very carefully tried to project last night. She purposefully made herself sound like a kid, and let Joe Bidden be the adult in the debate. Which brings me to dirty word #5: Feminism.
Books have been written about the usage of this word, which should mean no more than believing in women being allowed to have as much decision power over their lives as men do.
Is there anyone in the western hemisphere (and chunks of the other hemispheres) who has a serious problem with this? We believed in before it had a name, people, we just hadn’t made it into law.
I have a crazy thought: whenever people hear the word “feminism” they conjure up a world full of muscled Amazons with hairy armpits wielding knee-boots and whips, and holding the males of the Earth in indentured servitude.
Or maybe, it scares men who think “feminism” will mean they have to help with dinner and dishes every night instead of plopping down in front of the TV.
I don’t know. But clearly, there’s a problem. And in great old fashion women-bashing-other-women, I’m going to throw this one right at Sarah Palin’s feet. Because as I watched her last night, I could not help but notice how child-like she seemed in comparison to Joe Biden, and how she deliberately chose to pimp out her status as a mother for the promise of a little bit of ill-begotten power.
Palin had long reminded me of a book by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, called The Handmaid’s Tale.
I don’t know if the reason this book isn’t studied in classrooms the world over as an example of truly relevant anti-utopian literature alongside Orwell and Huxley is because Atwood is a woman, a Canadian, alive, or all three. Because Brave New World has got nothing on The Handmaid’s Tale.
And Atwood came just as close to foreshadowing the phenomenon of Sarah Palin as Orwell did towards exploring propaganda and manipulation of people in 1984.
I will leave with another blogger’s take on the relationship between Palin and Atwood’s fearsome “Aunts”.
Welcome to Gilead, Governor Palin
by Cynthia Boaz (truthout.org)
If you’ve ever read Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” you will recall the key role that was played by the women assigned to be the “Aunts.” The story revolves around a futuristic American society in which fundamentalist Christians install a gender-based caste system where each woman is assigned a specific societal function. It is a commentary on the dangerous erasing of the line between church and state in the contemporary United States. The merging of religion and government is carried out by a group of older, white male “commanders” whose propaganda demands that citizens be constantly terrorized into submission and obedience. The resulting regime is Atwood’s vision of the worst-case scenario: an American police-state theocracy where every woman’s identity is reduced to her sexual attributes, and each is assigned to a category based on her physical qualifications. Subtle references to racist philosophy are mixed into the literalist religious rhetoric.
The attractive young women of reproductive age are the “handmaids”; the attractive but infertile middle-age women are the “wives”; the dark-skinned women of any age are domestic servants, and so on. All women are forbidden from reading or writing. The country is renamed the Republic of Gilead, a reference to the biblical homeland of the patriarchs. And the Aunts - who are middle-aged white women of some previous prestige and education - are especially sinister characters. The primary job of the Aunts is to keep the handmaids (the childbearers) subservient. They go about this by convincing the handmaids that they are powerless and can only contribute to society when they fulfill their God-given responsibility to serve the commanders. The Aunts’ job, put simply, is to exploit other women by keeping them submissive and telling them that it’s for the good of all (and even more insidiously, that in obeying, the handmaids “empower” themselves.) What makes the Aunts so remarkable is their collective failure to realize that they are simply being used by the commanders to keep other women in line, and their willingness - glee, even - at doing so is simultaneously sad and terrifying. So what compels the Aunts to become traitors to both their sex and their country? First, they believe that their contribution to the repressive social order is righteous, and second, they’ve found that under this rigid system of social control, they have the illusion of a tiny bit of power.
Does any of this sound familiar? It should. Governor and Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin is the Gileadian “Aunt” manifested. Her sudden emergence onto the American political scene, accompanied by a burst of enthusiasm on the part of many American women, is a surreal example of life imitating art. Much of Palin’s rhetoric, tactics and personal philosophy seem to be taken directly from the Auntie training manual. By accepting the position on the GOP ticket despite her astonishing lack of qualifications, Palin signaled that she was prepared to be used - on the basis of her sex alone - in exchange for the promise of status and power. Refer to Palin’s RNC convention speech, which was mostly a fawning homage to McCain’s patriotism and leadership, sprinkled with condescending references to Obama as “our opponent.” Although the lines were delivered with Palin’s own folksy vernacular and over-enunciation, it was not Palin, but McCain - or more accurately, the GOP elders at whose feet he finds himself on election eve - who wrote the speech and whose voice echoed through the hall that night in St. Paul. Women who find themselves drawn to Palin because they think she epitomizes the classic “woman who has it all” might want to take a closer look. Sarah Palin was picked for the ticket solely because of - not despite - the fact that she is female. By keeping her sequestered from the media, McCain has confirmed he does not have faith in an unscripted Palin’s ability to represent the campaign to the world. By going along with it, Palin is telling us that she’s perfectly fine with being controlled by her male superiors. And by portraying herself as the candidate of the empowered woman (while simultaneously promoting policy that is openly hostile to the interests of working and middle-class American women), she reveals the sad truth about how little progress we’ve actually made.
Lest we think that Senator McCain is hesitant to keep pushing this stereotype in the face of abysmal performances by Palin in news interviews, the most recent reports reveal that his campaign intends to hype the expected wedding between Palin’s pregnant daughter and her boyfriend, the date of which is apparently being set just prior to the November election - with McCain and Palin sitting in the front row. Is it possible that Sarah Palin is just blissfully un-self-aware, or is it that she so eager for any illusion of power that she’ll allow herself to be marketed no matter what the cost to the dignity of all women? If Palin were truly an empowered woman, she would have refused to allow herself and her daughter to be used in this manner - to assist a party whose rhetoric and imagery promote the ideal woman as deferential to established norms rather than acting as an independent - or critical - thinker. If her selection was intended to signal to American women that empowerment is possible, why is Palin being kept under lock and key? Clearly, this is not an individual whose intelligence or perspective McCain respects, or else he would permit her to speak for herself. To continue pretending that Palin’s selection was anything other than an attempt to manipulate the voting public on the basis of a straitjacketed view of sexual roles is a dangerous lie that no American of any gender can afford to abide.
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