Let's Drop Dropping the F-bomb
In May a New York television reporter who apparently thought he was off the air lit into two men who had intruded on his shot, broadcasting a word-bomb to the five boroughs. From the New York Times Style section July 31
"This month a card player at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas made his name by launching a word-bomb across the table early in the tournament.
And all that art, if you want to call it that, reflects life, if you want to call it that. In the schoolyards kids bomb the pencils, the books and the teachers' dirty looks. Outside office buildings smokers bomb their bosses, and nonsmokers bomb the smokers. On the streets T-shirts bomb milk in favor of marijuana, bomb the space between the words New York and City and even bomb you just because "we're from Texas."
In the workplace, where so many of us spend our time, we are on the verge of a neo-Victorian age," said Anthony J. Oncidi, a Los Angeles labor lawyer with the firm Proskauer Rose. "Anybody can now take the position that they are subjected to a hostile work environment, and a hostile work environment can be made up of profanity."
In one case, now before the California State Supreme Court, an assistant who worked in the writing room for the television show "Friends" based a sexual harassment complaint in part on profanity. A lower court had said that a defense of "creative necessity" may apply, Mr. Oncidi said.
In advertising you hear it all the time," said Linda Kaplan Thaler, the chief executive of the Kaplan Thaler Group, an advertising agency, and a conscientious objector to word-bombing. "This is an agency that is run by women, and we weren't brought up to talk like truck drivers."
Truck drivers, sailors or pirates; it doesn't matter. The stand-ins for riffraff change, but plenty of people are still genuinely offended by profanity, not posing. James Bovino, chairman of the real estate investment firm Whiteweld, Barrister & Brown, says he watches only G-rated movies and has fired people for cursing. That's walking the walk, and it sends a message as unmistakable as a bow tie's."
"This month a card player at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas made his name by launching a word-bomb across the table early in the tournament.
And all that art, if you want to call it that, reflects life, if you want to call it that. In the schoolyards kids bomb the pencils, the books and the teachers' dirty looks. Outside office buildings smokers bomb their bosses, and nonsmokers bomb the smokers. On the streets T-shirts bomb milk in favor of marijuana, bomb the space between the words New York and City and even bomb you just because "we're from Texas."
In the workplace, where so many of us spend our time, we are on the verge of a neo-Victorian age," said Anthony J. Oncidi, a Los Angeles labor lawyer with the firm Proskauer Rose. "Anybody can now take the position that they are subjected to a hostile work environment, and a hostile work environment can be made up of profanity."
In one case, now before the California State Supreme Court, an assistant who worked in the writing room for the television show "Friends" based a sexual harassment complaint in part on profanity. A lower court had said that a defense of "creative necessity" may apply, Mr. Oncidi said.
In advertising you hear it all the time," said Linda Kaplan Thaler, the chief executive of the Kaplan Thaler Group, an advertising agency, and a conscientious objector to word-bombing. "This is an agency that is run by women, and we weren't brought up to talk like truck drivers."
Truck drivers, sailors or pirates; it doesn't matter. The stand-ins for riffraff change, but plenty of people are still genuinely offended by profanity, not posing. James Bovino, chairman of the real estate investment firm Whiteweld, Barrister & Brown, says he watches only G-rated movies and has fired people for cursing. That's walking the walk, and it sends a message as unmistakable as a bow tie's."
posted by Max Hartshorne at 10:45 AM
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