Today’s I Hate Monday is a bleep-free rant about bleeps. This is The Age of The Bleep. Someone should institute an annual Bleeping Award – except that it would be a decidedly dubious distinction to win it. What is with all the bleeps? Please don’t misunderstand me: this is not about censorship. It’s about people whose vocabulary is so stunted that they are forced to resort to two or three all-purpose bleepworthy words in practically every sentence. To take a mild example, something might be described as “as hot as hell,” while another item is “as cold as hell.” It’s all about weak vocabularies and lazy minds.
My grandmother told me that when Clark Gable said, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” you could hear people in the movie theater gasp in shock. She said if that had not been the final line of Gone With the Wind, people would have gotten up and walked out in protest. Fast forward a few decades and what has always been the worst of all swear words is now probably more common than damn. And while some TV programming blocks the view of the speaker’s mouth, others cover the sound with a bleep but allow anyone with kindergarten-level lip-reading skills to see exactly what the speaker said. Are we becoming that uncivilized?
I can guess exactly what some of you are thinking: “Whatever.”
I rest my case.
IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE: There is a word in the Oct. 18 Medical Examiner that should not be there. It’s a commonly used word or term, but one I would describe as inappropriate and unprofessional and certainly offensive to some. The article in question was a last-minute addition after a previously planned article was not submitted. The “substitute” article, unfortunately, was not thoroughly proofed. The online edition does not contain the word in question. My sincere apologies for this oversight.