PopSyndicate.com

George Carlin, in a very famous act, listed out the seven things you can’t say on television, and for a while, those seven words were, indeed, law.  But as the days go on, those words are increasingly acceptable. From the first moment Dennis Franz showed his flabby, pock-marked backside on national television, the standards of dirty words tanked on American television, and with it went the standards of cursing. Think about it: when was the last time someone cursed in such a way that you felt impressed? Have to think hard? And how depressing is that? American culture, so proud in its ingenuity, has come to a profound lack of creativity in the arena of swearing.

Even television, which so frequently acts as our guide, has attempted to conquer the world of cursing: Firefly boldly led the way, with such barely veiled words like rutting. Joss Whedon, bringer of all that is cult and brilliant, used a synonym and suddenly could drop an f-bomb on television? Battlestar Galactica did it too: frak became the new frick, and was so ubiquitous that Veronica Mars used it to skirt the sensors. And thus the mightiest of curse words was slain, forever lessened.

At least Red Dwarf invented a whole new word. We may have won the battle for independence, but in this war, the British smegging spanked us.

So what do we do? How do we right this horrible, horrible wrong? Do we cast an eye to other languages, other cultures? Perhaps; the Russians, whose previous contributions to societal betterment include Vodka, Chagall, and tiny, expensive eggs, have some of the foulest curse phrases ever invented. I once knew a Russian man who liked to tell people (in much more blunt terms) that he “made love” to your deceased mother in such a violently vigorous way that she rotated in her coffin. What brilliance is this! Italy has famous hand gestures, as does Japan. And, as our freshly evicted president is well aware, in the middle east one can dish out the deadliest of insults by flinging a shoe. I’ve got some heels that could kill a man. Is this, then, the way to go? Do we outsource our rudeness, like a call center or clothing factory?

No. For in America, we are a people of ideas. We are a country that enjoys large trucks crushing slightly smaller trucks, we like our beer cheap and plentiful, we savor the wonder that is celebrity mental illness, and forgo the twenty-four hour rule on joking about a sensitive subject for a twenty-four second rule. We are uncultured and fatally annoying. If any country can rise to the task of bringing shock back into the world of cursing, surely it is us. God bless the USA.

This is a call to arms, my internet friends. This is an invitation to do what we do best: mock, snark. Be rude. Share your vision. Expand the seven things (now depleted down to two, three tops) you can’t say on television to double digits, triple. Be vile, crude, and above all, shocking. For what good is a world where a sailor’s vernacular is on par with every high school kid, and the finger is, simply put, blasé? For where would we be without the ability to look authority in the face and tell it to smeg off?