Sunday, September 16, 2007
Opinion

The other F-word

If the controversy over comments made by Jerry Lewis during an improvised, age-addled comedy rant on his Labor Day Telethon teaches us anything...

Despite Jerry Lewis dropping the other F-word, the Labor Day Telethon to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association raised a record $63,759,478. CREDIT: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

By Eric Von Haessler

If the controversy over comments made by Jerry Lewis during an improvised, age-addled comedy rant on his Labor Day Telethon teaches us anything, it’s that we have misappropriated the letters that stand in for our taboo speech. It’s not like we’re in danger of running out of characters from the alphabet for the more egregious words to hide behind. The problem is that offensive speech has a habit of clinging to a mere handful of the 26 symbols we have available to shield society from the damage that can be wrought by hearing the full words.

It is this lack of oversight that led to so many of our newscasters having to explain to us that the TV funny man was in trouble for saying the F-word. No, not that F-word. The other F-word. What? There’s another F-word?

Yes. It turns out that one wasn’t enough. The F-word most famous for being the F-word, the one that vaguely has something to do with fornication but is most often used as a form of exclamation, is still the big kahuna of F-words. But now there’s competition from a new F-word used in equal measure to both describe the practitioners of an alternative lifestyle and to refer to someone as a sissy.

The smart people have decided that both words are so reprehensible, damaging and dangerous that they must never be uttered in public. A compromise was reached some years ago in an effort to resolve the dilemma posed by menacing words whereby the first letter was designated as the sound that would be used to shoulder the full weight and burden of the letters that followed. Think of the first letter of a bad word as a security guard who stands out front and makes sure everyone is safe, and you begin to get the drift.

It is in this manner that the lexicon flourished with new entries like the N-word, the F-word and, in some of our more wholesome circles, the B-word. Everything was fine and dandy for a good long time without much trouble at all. Sure, there was a bit of consternation when Southerners had the audacity to adopt two letters, G and D, to stand guard over their favorite act of colloquial blasphemy. But for the most part the system worked, until the gay activist community began to feel that their F-word was being treated like a second-class citizen.

What to do? Throw in the towel and request a new letter, or fight? A fight would be an uphill slog. People got thrown off TV for saying the more popular and better known F-word. Whereas a monster who uttered the second and lesser known F-word was usually only reprimanded with a slap on the wrist. It was as if F-word No. 1 was a felony and F-word No. 2 was a mere misdemeanor. In order to keep the letter F on their side, it would be necessary to elevate its importance. They needed some of the negative publicity so often generated by their nemesis, F-word No. 1.

As if on cue, they got lucky, and Isaiah Washington, an actor on a very popular TV show, used the dreaded remark on set and was reported to the word police. The activists pounced, the actor lost his job, and overnight the value of the other F-word jumped through the roof. The activists were squatters no more, and had a real claim on a legitimate F-word.

So what are we to do now that we have two legitimate F-words? You might ask yourself why gay people don’t make it easy and take more offense to the word “queer.” After all, the letter Q is sitting out there, just waiting to be taken.

It’ll do no good to refer to them as F-word No. 1 and F-word No. 2. The activists won’t like being officially relegated to No. 2 status, and the heteros won’t take kindly to the gay lobby messing with anything to do with their terms for fornication—no matter how plentiful those terms may be. The only answer is to give this upstart its own identity. Let’s just call it the gay F-word.

Don’t you feel safer already?

More of Eric Von Haessler’s musings can be found at newsjog.blogspot.com.