Ascent of the A-Word

by Geoffrey Nunberg

  Notes

  Chapter 1: The Word

  4 Fifty years ago: Peter Viereck, Shame and the Glory of the Intellectuals (Transaction Publishers, 2007, 1953), p. 313.

  4 A debate audience applauded: “Rick Perry’s Latino problem,” CNN.com, October 12, 2011, http://bit.ly/mRgenv. Greg Sargent, “GOP Debate Crowd Cheers Idea That Jobless Are to Blame for Their Plight.” The Plum Line blog—Washington Post, October 19, 2011, http://wapo.st/qalqwB.EricZorn, “Jeers and Cheers Start a Wild GOP Week,” Chicago, Tribune, January 22, 2012.

  5 The typical adherent of the Tea Party right: Kate Zernike and Megan Thee-Brenan, “Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated,” New York Times, April 14, 2010. David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam, “Crashing the Tea Party,” New York Times, August 16, 2011.

  6 “Wanna talk about the country’s ‘First Black President’?”: Comment by thelastvirgil at Kevin Pilley, “Clinton Country,” August 7, 2005, http://bit.ly/GQ13rl.

  7 “Usually a political movement”: Michael Tomasky, “Republican Day of Wrath,” New York Review of Books, September 29, 2011.

  8 “celebrations of meanness and inhumanity”: Charles Simic, “New Hampshire Follies,” New York Review of Books, February 23, 2012.

  9 Rush Limbaugh managed to achieve a fusion: Brian Stelter, “Attack by Limbaugh Awakens a ‘Stop Rush’ Campaign,” the New York Times, March 2, 2012, online at http://nyti.ms/HGaH2L.

  10 “Next time you’re in line waiting”: J. Roycroft, “The Moocher Class Is Finally Outnumbering the Producers,” The Roycroft Report, May 9, 2011, http://bit.ly/JWc3od.

  11 “I was driving south on the Meadowbrook”: Comment on democraticunderground.com, January 22, 2007, http://bit.ly/K54ejS.

  13 Public criticisms of someone’s grammar: Alexander Nazaryan, “The Real George Zimmerman’s Really Bad Grammar,” New York Daily News “Pageviews” blog, April 10, 2012, http://nydn.us/J6Q7EK. 1

  14 “For sheer verbal savagery”: Ron Chernow, “The Feuding Fathers,” Wall Street journal, June 26, 2010,.

  18 “a vulgar euphemism for a rectal aperture”: “Bush Draws Rebuke from Gore for a Salty Side,” Washington Times, September 5, 2000. Maureen Dowd, “Liberties; Minor-League Mouth,” New York Times, September 6, 2000.

  Chapter 2: The Uses of Vulgarity

  22 Still, there’s a paradoxical irony: Pamela Fiori in Jim Brousseau (ed.), Social Graces: Words of Wisdom on Civility in a Changing Society (Hearst Communications, 2002), p. 10. Steve Farkas and Jean Johnson with Ann Duffett and Kathleen Collins, “Aggravating Circumstances: A Status Report on Rudeness in America” (Public Agenda, 2002).

  24 Nowadays, in fact, the objection to vulgarity: James V. O’Connor, Cuss Control: The Complete Book on How to Curb Your Cursing (iUniverse, 2006), p. 161. Stephen L. Carter, Civility: Manners, Morals and the Etiquette of Democracy (Harper Collins, 1968), p. 68.

  26 None of that is even remotely true: Erving Goffman, Forms of Talk (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), p. 98. Robert Musil, “On Stupidity,” in Burton Pike and David S. Loft (eds. and trans.) Precision and Soul (University of Chicago Press, 1980), 278.

  29 “That guy you went out with is a freakin’ jerk”: “Do guys assume an invite always includes sex?,” Cosmopolitan online, http://bit.ly/zK5UsH.

  35 The specter of class colored the utterance: “Gore’s Summer Surprise,” Newsweek, November 19, 2000. Jake Tapper, “A ‘major league asshole’: In an embarrassing gaffe, George W. Bush insults a New York Times reporter,” Salon.com, September 4, 2000, http://bit.ly/sH9paZ.

  35 The incident provoked a blizzard of commentary: David Nyhan, “. . . It wasn’t pretty,” Boston Globe, September 6, 2000. “George W. Bush Makes Personal Attack on New York Times Reporter Adam Clymer,” CBS Evening News, May 5, 2000.

  36 Meanwhile, Bush’s defenders: Steve Dunleavy, “Way to go George! You tell ‘em! New York Post, September 5, 2000, 5. Cal Thomas, “Bush remarks not out of line,”Lawrence Journal-World, September 7, 2000, p. 7B.

  37 Those reactions are automatic: William Powers, “MEDIA: Anyone but Us,” National Journal, July 8, 2000. L. Brent Bozell III, “Is Boston Globe Purging Its Sole Un-PC Columnist?” Insight on the News, August 14, 2000. Jonah Goldberg, “Bush’s Wedg(ie) Issue,” National Review, September 5, 2000.

  38 “an arrogant and unaccountable priesthood of kingmakers”: Jonah Goldberg, “Bush’s Wedg(ie) Issue,” National Review online, September 5, 2000, http://bit.ly/JhcOui.

  39 Does our language shape our ideas: Quoted in William Morris and Mary Morris, Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (Harper and Row, 1975), p. xix. George Orwell, 1984 (Penguin Books, 1950), p. 309. William Robertson, “Entertaining Book Hails the Power of Language,” Miami Herald, July 15, 1990, p. 7C.

  41 “If a language provides a label”: Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (Penguin Books, 2007), p. 129.

  42 But sometimes we introduce a new word: Quentin Skinner, “Approaching historical texts,” in William L. Richter (ed.) Approaches to Political Thought (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2009), p. 168. Mary G. Dietz, “Patriotism,” in Terrence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson, Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 187.

  43 “the yuppie beau ideal”: John Bayley, The Power of Delight: A Lifetime in Literature, Essays 1962–2002 (W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), p. 34.

  44 And once you grasp the idea of cool: Peter N. Stearns, American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style (New York University Press, 1994).

  44 “observe the moral life in process of revising itself”: Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Anthenticity (Harvard University Press, 1971, 1972), p. 1.

  45 “mighty scoundrel”: Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, Cleartype Edition (Books Inc., 1867, 1868), p. 678.

  49 Yet the words can be decontaminated: Maureen Dowd, “Liberties; Minor-League Mouth,” New York Times, September 6, 2000.

  52 At one point Frankfurt compares: Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 5; http://bit.ly/y7qy51.

  Chapter 3: The Rise of Talking Dirty

  55 “Lieutenant (sg) Dove, USNR. A Cornell man”: Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (Picador, 1998), p. 238.

  56 Hemingway would have taken to it: Kenneth S. Lynn, Hemingway (Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 382. See also J. H. Willis Jr., “The Censored Language of War: Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero and Three Other War Novels of 1929,” Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Winter, 1999), pp. 467–487.

  57 “Philip was a nerd—a chemistry major”: Paul Fussell, Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic (Little, Brown, and Company, 1996), pp. 61–63.

  58 T. S. Eliot wrote a poem called “The Triumph of Bullshit”: Loretta Johnson, “T. S. Eliot’s Bawdy Verse: Lulu, Bolo and More Ties,” Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 27, No. 1/2, Modern Poets (Autumn, 2003), pp. 14–25. Dates of all other first citations from J. E. Lighter, Historical Dictionary of American Slang (Random House, 1994) and J. Green, Green’s Dictionary of English Slang (Oxford, 2011).

  59 The Naked and the Dead also provides: Jesse Sheidlower, The F Word (Random House, 1995).

  59 “Indispensable both to those administering chickenshit”: Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 95.

  61 Mencken dismissed such words: H. L. Mencken, The American Language, Supplement I (Knopf, 1945), p. 664.

  62 But Victorian profanity was never really intended as blasphemous: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Knowledge and Faith: And Other Discourses (G. P. Putnam, 1876), p. 10. Ellen Bayuk Rosenman, “Rudeness, Slang, and Obscenity: Working-Class Politics in London Labour and the London Poor,” in Susan David Bernstein and Elsie B. Michie (eds.), Victorian Vulgarity (Ashgate Publishing, 2009), p. 55.

  64 “Run along, asshole—I’m in the merchant marine”: Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the S
econd World War (Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 90.

  64 The subtext of swearing has always been class: G.T.W. Patrick, “The Psychology of Profanity,” Psychology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, (March, 1901), pp. 113–127. Delavan L. Pierson (ed.), The Missionary Review of the World, Vol. 44, No. 1 (January, 1921), p. 600.

  65 The upper-class “dandies” who joined Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders: Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America, A Cultural History, (Free Press, 1996) p. 185. Philip Everett Curtiss, “The mucker pose,” Harper’s Magazine (November 1921), p. 662. James Truslow Adams, “The Mucker Pose,” Harper’s Magazine (November 1928), p. 661.

  66 Nor was the use of risque language the exclusive province of men: Mary Agnes Hamilton, “Nothing Shocks Me,” Harper’s Magazine, July 1927, p. 152. Oliver Herford, The Deb’s Dictionary (J.B. Lippincott, 1931).

  66 Ordinary middle-class Americans were slower: H. L. Mencken, “American Profanity,” American Speech, Vol. 19, No. 4 (December 1944), pp. 241–299.

  67 When the World War I drama What Price Glory: Joseph Wood Krutch. The American Drama Since 1918: An Informal History. (Brazillier, 1957), p. 35.

  67 The enfeeblement of profanity led some to predict: H. L. Mencken, “American Profanity,” American Speech, Vol. 19, No. 4 (December 1944), pp. 241–249.

  68 “We have lately seen the heroes of a great moral war”: H. L. Mencken, foreword to Burges Johnson, The Lost Art of Profanity (Bobbs-Merril, 1948), p. 12.

  68 “In his effort to carry his realistic portrayal of men at war”: Orville Prescott, “The Books of the Times,” New York Times, May 7, 1948.

  69 Even as Prescott was writing: John C. Burnham, Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History (New York University Press, 1993), p. 221. Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny (Little, Brown, and Company, 1951), p. x.

  70 But the new language was chiefly spread: Bernard Augustine DeVoto, “The Easy Chair,” Harper’s Magazine, December, 1948, pp. 98–101.

  72 The spread and acceptance of the new vocabulary: Rochelle Gurstein, The Repeal of Reticence: America’s Cultural and Legal Struggles Over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual Liberation, and Modern Art (Hill and Wang, 1998). Agnes Repplier, “The Repeal of Reticence,” Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 113 (March 1914), p. 298. D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and “A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 334.

  74 “would be naturally and habitually used”: Thomas C. Mackey, Pornography on Trial (ABC-CLIO, 2002), p. 155.

  74 “Hence the controversy that began in 2003”: David G. Savage and Jim Puzzanghera, “High court may rethink @#*! on TV,” Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2008. Daniel W Drezner, “What the F$%& is Kevin Martin Thinking?” DanielRezner.com, June 6, 2007, http://bit.ly/HacUnw.

  76 “There’s one word which Amerika hasn’t destroyed”: Quoted in John C. Burnham, Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History (New York University Press, 1993), p. 226.

  76 To be sure, that was a minority view on the left: John H. McWhorter, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care (Gotham Books, 2003), p. 134. Jerry Rubin, Do It: Scenarios of the Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 1970), p. 111. Neil J. Smeisler, Reflections on the University of California: From the Free Speech Movement to the Global University (University of California Press, 2010), p. 34.

  77 But however dubious the logic: Mark Rudd quoted in John C. Burnham, Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History (New York University Press, 1993), p. 226. Jim Dawson, The Compleat Motherfucker: A History of the Mother of All Dirty Words (Feral House, 2009), p. 100.

  78 The defenders of the established order: Humphrey quoted in Henry J. Perkinson, Getting Better: Television & Moral Progress (Transaction Publishers, 1996), p. 150. George Will, One Man’s America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation (Three Rivers Press, 2008), p. 215.

  79 But whatever their remote etymologies: Thomas De Quincey, “Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” Blackwood’s Magazine, Vol. 46, November 1839, p. 663. Edward Shils, The Virtue of Civility (Liberty Fund, 1997), p. 49.

  80 But when commentators and social critics disinterred: “The Decline of Manners,” Wall Street Journal, October 30, 1968, p. 20.

  81 The New York Times acknowledged the short-sightedness: “Crisis Management on Campus,” New York Times, May 11, 1969, p. 14.

  81 In 2007, when a conservative blog posted a study: Mona Charen, “Re: Web Nastiness,” The Corner Blog, National Review Online, March 28, 2007, http://bit.ly/nZusl7.

  82 To evoke civility is to presuppose: Quotes on civility from: Bruce Evan Blaine, The Psychology of Diversity: Perceiving and Experiencing Social Difference (Mayfield Publishing Co., 1999), p. 168. Mark King-well, The World We Want: Restoring Citizenship in a Fractured Age (Rowan & Littlefield, 2000), p. 9. Don Herrin, “Deep Learning” : A Critical Thinking Resource, p. 36, http://bit.ly/H82PWQ. Lydon Olson, “Lyndon Olson on the Case for Civility,” Texas Tribune, November 16, 2009.

  84 “applicable to virtually any example of moral or mannerly misbehavior”: Cheshire Calhoun, “The Virtue of Civility,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Summer 2000), pp. 251–275.

  Chapter 4: The Asshole Comes of Age

  86 “You don’t need a rectal thermometer to know who the assholes are”: Quoted in Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (Bantam Books, 1987), p. 383.

  87 “Is it my imagination or is there a law”: Paul Dickson, Slang: The Topical Dictionary of Americanisms (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006), p. 262.

  88 The pervasive cultural theme of that period: Roger Rosenblatt, “The Scariest Time of the Year,” Time, November 3, 1980. “The Decline of Manners,” Wall Street Journal, October 30, 1968. Edward Sapir, “Fashion,” in David G. Mandelbaum (ed.), Selected Writings in Language, Culture, and Personality (University of California Press, 1949), p. 374.

  98 “something that is willfully substituted”: Otto Jespersen, Language: It’s Nature, Development, and Origin (Henry Holt and Company, 1922), pp. 299–301.

  92 It was around this time that law enforcement officers: Norm Stamper, Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Expose of the Dark Side of American Policing (Stamper Nation Books, 2006), p. xi. John Van Maanen, “The Asshole,” in Peter K. Manning and John Van Maanen (eds.), Policing: A View from the Street (Goodyear Publishing, 1978), pp. 307–328.

  94 the hidden injuries of class: Richard Sennett and Jonathon Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (W.W. Norton & Company, 1993).

  96 “I realized that Harry was the kind of part”: Quoted in Michael Munn, John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth (New American Library, 2004), p. 308.

  102 “authenticity required defining oneself against”: Abigail Cheever, Real Phonies: Cultures of Authenticity in Post–World War II America (University of Georgia Press, 2010), p. 4.

  104 “Class, conservatives insist”: Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? (Macmillan, 2005), p. 114.

  105 “Collectively, we Americans might not know exactly what ‘authentic’ is”: John Zogby, The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream (Random House, 2008), p. 163.

  106 “Americans do not see society as a layer cake”: David Brooks, “One Nation, Slightly Divisible,” Atlantic Monthly, December 2001.

  106 The yuppie was merely a specific form: Victor Davis Hanson, “Obama: Fighting the Yuppie Factor,” National Review Online, August 13, 2010, http://bit.ly/HoLxXY.

  109 “Asshole is the going insult this year”: Tom Wolfe, “The Street Fighters,” Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), p. 235.

  114 “appeared cynically to conform to codes of behavior”: Cheever, Real Phonies, p. 2.

  115 “a rule of phonies”: Allen Ginsberg in Gordon Ball (Ed.) Journals: Early F
ifties, Early Sixties (Grove, 1977), p. 146, http://bit.ly/rZl20e.