What year is this anyway?  Is that guy still on television who comes through the door after working as a bus driver, you know the guy who occasionally tells his wife he might send her to the moon?  Is that round dude still sitting in his comfy chair, hating his neighbors, calling his son-in-law meathead?  Is television still black and white, and we’re lucky if we have two or three variety shows to watch?  No it isn’t, is it?

So why in the sweet-mother-of-flaccid-dicks do people still have a problem with the word “fuck“?  Some may tell you there’s simply no need for language like that in a decent society.  Some words are best left in the gutter where they belong.  You know what I think?  I think the word fuck is one of the greatest thing to happen to the English language.  It is the one fool-proof word that allows for the insertion of an exclamation point anywhere in a sentence you want.  Yes, yes, the British has made it abundantly clear that there is no need for it, but in all fairness, you can call your best friend a cunt in that country, but to have “a toss over some bird’s fanny” is repulsive.   C’mon folks, it’s just a word, and it’s been here long enough that it should be rejoiced.

Seriously, where would the classic comedy of Richard Pryor be without the word fuck?  Anyone who has witnessed the brilliance of HBOs Deadwood knows the importance of gutter language in that epic.  Would the film Scarface ever had got the same critical acclaim without its passionate us of that one little curse word?  Do we call them curse words because we are supposed to be setting some kind of hex every time we use them?  Is it because the word invokes some extra power in a sentence?  Does the adding of hard punctuation to the middle of a sentence make the user some sort of evil word wizard that needs to be stopped?  I will admit to using the word quite freely in my writing.  For me it’s a flow thing.  The cadence or beat to a sentence can be altered to fit the correct mood with the use of fuck and its variations.  There have been recent times when I have been asked to tone it down by some of my oldest friends.  It usually has something to do with their children possibly reading something I wrote.  We are even having trouble with possible advertisers because of “foul” language.  Why is this word so powerful?  How could it possibly hurt children?  It’s only a word, but it is the most famous of the bad words, and businesses still run the other way from it.

I, for one, love the word.  I do feel power when I write with it.  It allows me to make it perfectly clear what my emotions are about a subject.  Is that it?  Do folks get uncomfortable when you so succinctly express emotion?  Is there some deep-rooted history with the word passed down from generation to generation that is now so entrenched in our existence that we simply continue to vilify it.  This can’t be true.  All the great cable television shows that have mattered in the last 10 years has been filled with the word fuck.  Everything on HBO from The Sopranos to Deadwood to True Detective to True Blood would not have nearly the power they had without the word fuck.  Again, is it about power?  Is it okay for make-believe to use the curse words, as long as it never gets too real?  It’s been said a million times; the words kids learn in the schoolyard are far worse than anything a writer could ever throw at them  Living in a multicultural country, we learned how to swear in at least 3 different languages before we were 10 years old.  Yes, there are times when the word need not be used, but art is not one of them.  Where would Charles Bukowski be without the word fuck?  Hey… Charles fucking Bukowski?

If you think we are better off in a world vilifying words like fuck when we are adding words like ‘selfie’, ‘hawt’, and ‘amazeballs’ to the Oxford Dictionary, well… you can just go fuck yourself.  Food for thought. – FATS.