Watch the f@%$ing language!

What’s the deal, lately? Could just be Doppler waves of media resonance, but stories of linguistic prudishness are rife. There was the Florida theater that responded to complaints about their marquee and changed The Vagina Monologues to The HooHaa Monologues. And a recent flapdoodle in a Seattle neighborhood over a high-end dog care store called High Maintenance Bitch. Now, for the last two days, I’ve been hearing stories of a Newberry-winning children’s book being criticized by librarians as inappropriate for using the word “scrotum.”

Really? Is this really where we are heading?

I mean, this isn’t exactly “fuck” we’re talking about. I’m at least willing to hear someone out on the bitch thing, because there is serious cultural baggage in that term and its various and sundry appropriations, but the fact of the matter is it is a real term in the dog world, entendres be damned. But vagina and scrotum?

The worst part is that in each case, it is a vocal minority putting the clamps on. N open dialogue about where limits should be set and why, but the pissiest wheel getting the grease.

Makes about as much sense as placing proscriptive grammar ahead of descriptive, or rule of law before common sense, and is yet another example of a culture infantilizing itself.