'WSJ': Don't Curse In Front Of The Help
In the wake of the recent Second Circuit decision curbing the F.C.C.'s ability to fine broadcast networks over fleeting expletives, many hands have been wrung by the arbiters of decency and proponents of primness. The wringiest wrists now belong to Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Henninger wonders why certain "family newspapers" still resist the urge to indulge in the seductive pleasures of obscenity, particularly when everyone knows that no one under the age of thirty reads a newspaper anymore. His rationale? It's all about protecting poor people from themselves.
[M]y argument for cutting down on the public profanity, including even by Steven Spielberg's writers, is to avoid undermining the useful virtues of self-discipline and self-restraint.
It's entertainment values versus workaday values. TV life versus real life. Entertainers aren't like the rest of us. They work shorter hours. They have lots of free time to have fun. But most people have to gut it out at a job 9 to 5 or longer every day, every week, for years. This requires discipline, and the slovenly, unrestrained ethos behind talking dirty on live TV devalues the idea of a more-or-less controlled life.
In the really olden days, societies or nations tried to instill some level of self-discipline or social strength primarily for reasons of survival. It helped in case the barbarians decided to invade, as happened in the last century. Then it helped if the nation's fighting men had a bedrock of personal self-control on the way in, because slovenly people are hard to train. If you have no control over your mouth, what else can't you control?
Probably your cock, right? That's what it always seems to come down to with these folks.
