If y’all can name me five poor or working people that give half a fuck what [first name of prominent journalist] fucking [surname of prominent journalist] has to say about anything I’ll kiss your ass.These were in response to a Bernie Sanders tweet chiding the journalist for spreading misinformation about Medicare for All. Now, my first impulse was to ask what I would have to do for them not to kiss my ass. (First prize, one week in Philadelphia; second prize, two weeks in Philadelphia.) My second reaction was that while they had a point -- one should have a decent skepticism about the corporate media and their works -- at the same time it is perfectly legit to point out when corporate media figures promulgate falsehoods about important issues. I'm a working person, and I give at least a quarter of a fuck what anchorcritters with vast platforms have to say about such things, because thanks to their elite positions they influence what most people believe.
Got grown motherfuckers on the left "[first name of prominent journalist] you're being dishonest!!" Like the fuck did y'all expect? Quit pining for the approval of these limp dicks and damn sure quit assuming best intentions in their coverage.
Imagine asking, say, who cares what Donald Trump has to say about anything? No sensible person would take Trump's word on anything, or pine for his approval or assume best intentions in his ravings. But I don't think Sanders was doing any of these things. He was trying to correct misinformation that might, either directly or through trickle-down, affect poor or working people's opinions of a good system for providing health care in the United States.
My third reaction was, as noted, to fret that I'm getting old in a bad way (oh no, I'm sounding like my mother!), because it bothers me when people think that putting a bunch of fucks, motherfuckers, and shit into their discourse makes it somehow more persuasive -- or makes me pine for their approval, assume their best intentions, or believe that they're commentators I should take seriously.
This person doesn't always resort to naughty words in their Twitter output, so I've been trying to figure out why they did it here. I listened to one of their podcasts once: it was heavily peppered with fucks. The participants were mostly male; the one (?) female joined in, but it was, like Chapo Trap House, basically a boys' club in manner and content. So my first guess is that they think they sound Street, which incidentally is cultural appropriation: white kids trying to sound like black kids.
At one time saying "fuck" a lot could have been defended as breaking a taboo. I remember how thrilling it was when Jefferson Airplane sang "Up against the wall motherfuckers," on a major-label album, but that was almost fifty years ago. And it's a lousy song. Ditto for the Sex Pistols, forty years ago, though they did it better. Certainly many people would still regard "fuck" as taboo, but not the audiences this person is addressing. If anything, it's conformist, safe, boring. yet irritating. The two can go together: think of a mosquito buzzing around your head when you're trying to sleep.
I could probably overlook the fucks on the grounds that it's a generational thing, if not for all the British rock stars older than I am who also season their speech with fucks. As the examples of Pete Townshend, Jefferson Airplane, Johnny Rotten and others suggest, this kind of talk is now old people talk: your grandma talking salty. When certain people misuse "literally," I wonder what word they use when "literally" is the right word to use. And when wannabe Internet celebrities talk nasty for street cred or fitting in with the cool hipster guys, I wonder what they'll do when "fuck" loses what is left of its obscenity. It still has it in boy culture, of course, when somebody tries to be macho by saying "Fuck the Republicans," and that's not a sign of wokeness either. It's the opposite of being edgy, bold, independent. It's a way of showing you belong. And much of the time it's a substitute for substance, as in the tweets I quoted here.
