Gilda Radner, may her comic genius rest in peace, played some wonderful characters back in the 1970s when I found "Saturday Night Live" routinely funny. Probably my favorite persona was Emily Letilla, an angry, elderly woman with a hearing problem who would vehemently protest outrageous things she had heard.
My favorite Letilla episode was her outrage over the contemporary campaign by parents to combat violins on television. Letilla worried that only showing violin music after 11 p.m. would deny children exposure to an exquisite musical experience.
Cast member Chevy Chase gently interrupted the diatribe to inform her that the parents' campaign was actually directed at violence on television, not violins. "Oh," said Letilla, adding her trademark, "Never mind."
The inability to hear accurately is another willful affliction of today's media. We saw this last month in coverage of President Trump lashing out at both Iran and Israel for violating the ceasefire the U.S. leader negotiated:
You basically have two countries that have been fighting for so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.
This prompted all kinds of media analysis about Trump's anger and personality, and some fretting about un-presidential language. In fact, Americans have been exposed to presidential cursing multiple times over the years. And somehow the nation has survived to begin celebrating its 250th birthday this week.
As my good friend John Phillips, the popular and wise KABC radio talk-show host, puts it: "C-SPAN is starting to sound like a loading dock."
Sometimes swearing may be accidental. Sometimes, as I believe Trump's was this time, it's intentional to communicate an intensity of feeling. Modern swearing seems more about using curse words to emphasize other words than for their original meanings. That's what I explore in this week's audio commentary you can listen to below.
What's striking to me is the differing media attitudes about presidential cursing. Trump's use of the F-word now is something serious, worthy of debate and examination.
Back in 2010, however, at the signing of the ObamaCare legislation, Joe Biden introduced Barack Obama, hugged him, and was heard gratuitously informing the president, "This is a big f****** deal."
That was treated as a lighthearted, collegial expression between grown men. And indeed, Democrats quickly produced "BFD" T-shirts as a fundraising gimmick.
Just like ordinary vocabulary, curse words have changed with the times. "Zounds" was once offensive as a corruption for God's wounds. "Drat" and "darn" were euphemisms for "damn." And "gosh," "golly," and "gee" were once less offensive substitutes for God.
Golly gee! Maybe someday f*** will evolve from an F-bomb into a mere firecracker.
Technically, this week's Sunday column was not another Malcolm's Memory. But my examination of how journalism has changed from the days when I fell in love with it until today's perverted version might seem like it:
Lessons from My Life in Journalism: Watching the Assaults on Donald Trump
Key point:
Something else I’ve learned over these 6 decades is that the journalism I fell in love with long ago and tried to live up to for so long is not the journalism of today. And our society is the worse for it.
I'm still hoping that the most recent audio commentary prompts some righteous action by the Trump administration to finally liberate the Pakistani country doctor. Perhaps unknowingly, Dr. Shakil Afridi helped determine the secret hiding place of the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden.
In a clandestine raid shortly after, SEAL Team 6 delivered justice.
Unfortunately, a U.S. Embassy official publicly identified the doctor as a big help in the hunt. Because he inadvertently revealed Pakistan's long-term deceit, jeopardizing its $2 billion in annual U.S. aid, Dr. Afridi has been in solitary confinement ever since.
This doesn't seem right, if only because in the future, who in their right mind would ever consent to help the United States again?
