John Mark Reynolds has an extremely interesting post on politics vis a vis profanity. In it, he surmises:

To paraphrase Senator Edwards, there are two Americas. There is the America where calling your opponent a (insert profanity here) freak is normal and the Other Places where it is not. Vulgar America is a place where blasphemy, the real kind, is still considered “daring” and the only offense would be feeling offended by it. There are Other Places where using the Lord’s name in vain is still considered rude.

If you live mostly in one place, then the other seems weird to you. In the Other Places, a lady or gentleman might swear (though with apologies later) when very angry. The “frankly Scarlet” line of attack is tolerated, if not encouraged in extreme circumstances.

While Reynolds’ piece is primarily focused on the political ramifications of this cultural split, I’m more interested in the sociological implications. He notes,

Senator Obama is best understood as coming out of the blend of government and academic conferences and non-profits that often views itself as the best part of the nation. He “gets” that world . . . including the new rules of Vulgar America. As a result, the harsh words of Jeremiah Wright (”d- America”) do not sound so harsh to him and opposition to them must be all about race.

He repudiates some of the “ideas” of Reverend Wright, in good academic fashion with no clarity about which ideas he rejects. Even most Democrat primary voters don’t see how alienating these words are, because at least a big plurality of them live and work in Vulgar America.

Divorcing it from the explicitly political, I’d hafta say that I’m from Vulgar America. Not saying that I grew up with a bunch of people who cuss like sailors (I’ve heard that my mother cussed once, but I’ve never actually heard her cuss.), but the groups that he cites as being the constituents of Vulgar America have tended to be the circles I’ve traveled in my adult life. But then, I think there’s a degree to which he oversimplifies the differences in Vulgar America and Other America. Specifically, I think there are people in Other America who do (or would, if they heard the entire sermon) understand where Reverend Wright, for instance, is coming from, even if they disagree with it. In other words, I don’t know that the rhetorical devices of Vulgar America, for lack of a better term (pun intended), are as much of a disconnect as he supposes. While I am certain that there are people who shut off completely when they hear “vulgar” phrasing, my general impression is that cussing is not as off-putting as Reynolds would have us believe. But then, I probably wouldn’t know because I live in Vulgar America.

But thinking about it a little more, and perhaps from a dramatically different angle, I’m curious about how Black “Vulgar America” is. Now what I’m not suggesting is that all Black folks cuss regularly, or even abide cussing in their presence, because ultimately his point is not about the specific vocabulary of vulgarity. While Reynolds is careful to make academia the central locus of Vulgar America, thereby allowing it to influence pundits on both the left and right, the way he describes Other America …They will tolerate a dismissive McCain vulgarity in [terrorist fascism’s] direction, but they don’t want to hear their sacred things (God, duty, honor, country) dismissed that way. For some reason, that line fills me with a very specific image of what Other America looks like, and the picture I see looks a lot like the crowd at a tractor pull, a NASCAR event, or at Graceland. Now, this may not at all be Reynolds’ intent, but that’s kinda what I’m seeing. I see superimposed flags and crosses. I see people with a “love it or leave it” mentality, which is not where most of the Black folks I know come from, regardless of their political bent. See, most of the Black folks I’ve known in my life (which means the overwhelming majority of the people I’ve known in my life), Democratic, Republican, Independent, and other, have no problems understanding that loving America, or being proud of it, is not the same as uncritical acceptance of everything that goes on here. In fact, if I’m honest about it, the only Black folks I’ve ever “known” who have intimated otherwise are ones I “know” only via their writing. (And for real, I personally believe that the timbre of their arguments is amped up a bit to elicit reactions. My guess is that if I actually knew those people, the ideas I’d hear expressed would be quite a bit more nuanced.) And again, I’m not saying that the “God, honor, duty, country” set can’t include any Black people, but my guess is that if it does, there aren’t a whole, whole lot of us in there. Not if those are the main criteria.

To take it a little further afield, I think that the designation of “vulgar” is very much class-based. I mean, if you do the etymology, there’s no question that certain words got acceptance by “cultured” folk because those were the words the “cultured” folks used. I mean, for real - the word “vulgar” itself is rooted in the idea that “there’s a lower class and we ain’t it.” Now for much of American history, the “we ain’t it” class has been Us. Commensurate with that, many of our cultural products have been regarded as “vulgar” (at least at their inception), even when they reflected high artistry. (Hello, Jazz, et al) Hence, while I’m fairly sure that Reynolds’ by no means intended to automatically include Black folks in Vulgar America, I wonder if his description of Other America inadvertently excludes us.

But then at the same time, I’m also thinking that what he says about Other America, “they don’t want to hear their sacred things dismissed…” is true of any group, even Vulgar America. The only line of demarcation between the Other America he describes and another Other America is what constitutes the “scared things.” Cuz my guess is that for even people who cuss all the time, there are certain people/things/ideas/institutions for which certain words are always inappropriate. But that’s just me guessin’. I probably don’t know, because it’s pretty much a lock that I don’t live in Reynolds’ Other America.

Generally speaking, I’m about as much of a linguistic aprescriptivist as there can be. I generally try to focus more on the idea than the specific words, because in most cases, the idea is where the real action is. Me, I’d rather understand what the person who’s cussin is tryin to say than get caught up on the fact that he cussed. Having said that, I can’t front like I don’t play semantics games. I do it all the time; dependin on who you ask, I do it too much. All that’s just to say that it was with mild interest that I read Walter Williams’ piece, Silly Talk.

I ain’t gon’ lie, I, too, get mildly peeved when I people use reflexive pronouns incorrectly “He went to the store with myself,” or when I hear somebody say “…and I” when it should be “…and me.” But not for the reasons Professor Williams outlines. With me, it ain’t about the verbiage itself, per se, it’s that most people don’t recognize the fact that they’re using a nonstandard grammatical construction. Again, there would be no problem for me if those weren’t some of the same people (and same types of people) who raised such a stink about other types of nonstandard construction, like AAVE.

Even though he seems to take more umbrage to it than I do, I was pretty much on board with Professor Williams until he dropped this:

I wonder whether it’s just me, or is anyone else bothered by silly talk? It might be that I’m getting old and out of touch, or it might be that I’m suffering from having received my education before it became fashionable for white people to like black people and nonsense was unacceptable.

“Fashionable for white people to talk like black people?” Really? There’s a part of me that wants to let that line ride, but I can’t. With the construction he’s using, it seems to be equating the way Black people talk to silliness or nonsense. Given the examples he cites earlier, I don’t necessarily think he intends to disparage Black people, but it sure seems like he’s meaning to do that. But that kind of talk is, well, just silly.

I don’t think I mentioned the Mayweather-Hatton destruction last month, but I did watch it. I actually watched both of Pretty Boy Floyd’s fights last year. The first one wasn’t so impressive, but I couldn’t even front on him last month. He was good. And he won me some money. I had bet on a KO in 11, so I won the dough. Good times all around.

Of course, the best part about a Mayweather fight isn’t the fight, or even Mayweather himself. Personally, I find the “money” persona to be borderline insufferable. Naw, the best thing about a Mayweather fight is the older Mayweathers, Floyd Sr. and Roger. To hear them talk is a thing of beauty.

As people who know me know (and if you don’t, you can look down a couple posts and see the breakdown on ass-compounds), I’m particular to AAVE, particular the more…spicy version. At one time, my favorite word in the world was “motherfucker,” and even though that’s not necessarily the case any more, it still has a special place in my heart. Bearing that in mind, it’s only natural that I love to listen to Big Floyd and Uncle Roger. Number one, because they’re SO vulgar with it, but number two, because of their cadence. They, like the late Robin Harris, say the word the way it’s supposed to be said.

All that notwithstanding, Big Floyd had some…interesting comments on Li’l Floyd’s potential foray into mixed martial arts from an interview at fighthype.com. (If you’re linguistically sensitive, stop NOW!)

“He ain’t got to worry about retiring. When they get through with his ass, he will be retired. He will be retired fucking with them motherfuckers. They would love to fight him. This ain’t no fucking boxing; ain’t none of these motherfuckers scared of his ass. I’ll fight one of them motherfuckers if they just want to throw their guards up. I’m old and I’ll beat they ass, but when they start talking about that going to the ground, elbows and knees and all of that, man fuck that shit. I ain’t about to go in there. Them motherfuckers dangerous man. One thing about it, them guys can take a fucking punch man. Those guys will laugh at Lil Floyd when he hit them.”

If a person’s gonna cuss, they should model after Big Floyd and Uncle Roger. Seriously.