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Swearing moves up

[today’s run: 3.2 miles (Watson Road)]

The Atlantic this month has a back of the magazine end-piece about swearing which starts off with a plethora of f-bombs in different forms. I think it is supposed to be humorous and also convey the information that swearing has gone upper crust.

The Atlantic used to be a general literary magazine with non-fiction about issues of the day or just interesting stuff salted with some fiction and poetry. Since they moved from Boston to Washington D.C. they have become more and more political, less about culture and more about their left of center stance. It’s not as good as it used to be.

But I was struck by the sudden flurry of vulgarity.

I spend quite a bit of time watching youtube videos. Most of them are craftsmanship kinds of things, car repair, small engines, boat building, that kind of stuff along with some culture things and some religious things. So I was immediately struck by the Atlantic piece because it is so much out of my normal on-line life, let alone my in-person life.

People on youtube, that I know about, generally don’t swear. One of the repair guys I watch fairly regularly, he will sometimes throw in a bit of innuendo, which would be easy to miss, a bit of junior high. Otherwise all of these grease monkey guys and carpenters and whatnot are able to get through their presentations cleanly.

But here is a supposedly high-class literary magazine with a column about the ubiquity of swearing, and happy to participate in same.

So yeah, I guess they are right. The trendy people are following in the footsteps of Samuel Jackson and the regular working guys somehow can be polite and informative and even interesting.

4 replies on “Swearing moves up”

The leader of the GOP pretty much set the standard. He boasted about grabbing women by the *** – “they let you do it” – and pursuing a married woman because he wanted to *** her. Yet tens of millions and the vast majority of Evangelical Christians voted for him.

Twice.

Information I found indicates The Atlantic moved to DC from Boston in 2005 or thereabouts.

You’re right.
(Which may go to show the level of distortion that the abortion conflict gave to our political scene.)

And 2005 sounds about right.

I saw an article from James Fallows on their website. He kind of got me into The Atlantic
as a writer. He would write articles about WordStar word processor hack codes, probably
in the early 1990’s? Maybe earlier than that.
Anyway, he was a speech writer for Carter and wrote up an appreciation of Carter.
It’s nice he has admiration for his old boss.
Long ago I had sent him an email with that sentiment, that the magazine was better from Boston
and he said it was a required move to stay in business.
I think Substack and some other internet outlets are going to finish them off
if they can’t figure out how to expand their inside-the-beltway mindset.
But now they get to swear, so maybe that will bring in lots of new trendy youngsters or something.

Actually, I may have been taking The Atlantic when we lived at the farm.
I know I was taking New Yorker then. That didn’t last long. I don’t know enough
New York stuff to keep up. The funnies were frequently funny though.

I started my subscription when you showed me that Wordstar article. I really liked the broad range of viewpoints. Sadly, I couldn’t justify keeping it after they moved to DC and became another house organ of the Democratic party. I get that viewpoint from my free academic subscription to the NY Times. I also subscribed to Scientific American for about the same time frame as the Atlantic. But they got a head person who decided that opposition to the administration of Bush the 2nd was more important than science so didn’t see the point of continuing it.

I am reminded 20 years ago when I ditched The Economist for similar reasons regarding their hawkish and strained stance supporting the invasion of Iraq (and we know how that ended – pretty much as I expected from the start).

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