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Decency Group Says "$#*!" Is Indecent
The Parents Television Council says the "$#*!" in the title of the upcoming CBS show $#*! my dad says is indecent. From the article: "'CBS intentionally chose to insert an expletive into the actual name of a show, and, despite its claim that the word will be bleeped, it is just CBS's latest demonstration of its contempt for families and the public,' declared PTC President Tim Winter. 'There are an infinite number of alternatives that CBS could have chosen, but its desire to shock and offend is crystal clear in this decision.'" By this logic Qbert was the filthiest game ever made.
The definition of some words as "bad" and others as "good" is more or less arbitrary and generally classist. For example the expletive in question, shit, derives from old english (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=shit). Oddly enough the polite words such as feces seem to derive from latin. The vulgar word (in the literal sense, meaning of the common people) became considered impolite, as it sucks to be a common peasant. Now hundreds of years later in a society that prides itself on not having nobility, and helped the french decapitate most of theirs, we still cling to the idea that vulgar words are bad, and latin and greek ones are better, to the point that we allow the FCC to regulate speech and the press on the flimsy excuse that the airwaves they regulate are a scarce resource. Don't you just hate people sometimes?
It's either false dichotomies, or the terrorists win, you decide.
As someone who has read English literature for the last 400 years
Bloody hell you're an old bugger. Or did you mean from the last 400 years?