Don't Tell Me What to Say

I'm a fairly big supporter of First Amendment Rights - I know you're excited at the sight of this - and I hate when people try to "backwards-justify" their moral or religious beliefs by scorning people who believe differently than they do.

For example, I say a lot of bad words in my day-to-day life. What can I say? I like the language of the streets*.

What I'm getting to is my dislike of people who say that bad language is the result of poor education or lack of vocabulary. The argument is always framed as though the person who uses profanity is the imbecile, muttering under his breath because he doesn't have the intellect to articulate himself properly.

I thought about that today and had a very light-bulb-over-the-head sort of moment. Aha! All of the people who have ever cited me for bad language were the ones without very many words! Vocabulary, indeed.

It was a revelation bordering on epiphany.

I've always felt like the idiot, musing over why I had to use such "filthy language." But, in fact, I have a pretty extensive vocabulary and it includes the seven dirty words and meekrob.

Obviously, not all people who use the seven dirty words are brilliant, so it doesn't completely overturn the old saying, but at least I am an exception to a pesteringly snide rule. It's always religious people who correct you, telling you can't say this or that because it's impolite or God doesn't like it.

The most ironic thing about it is that these people pretend like God can tell the difference between damn and darn (or dang, or doodlesticks, or even oh man), as if they're beating the system by changing the word around a little. Regardless of the actual wording, the context is still there, people. It's ridiculous. The same God who built the heavens and the earth, the sky and Winona Ryder, isn't smart enough to understand the intricacies of semantics. Wow. Like, "Timmy, you were such a good Christian for saying fiddlesticks instead of Damn. You get to go to heaven."

Okay, I believe in God and I give him/her/it a little more credit than that. I hope he can understand that no differece exists in all of these cutesy sounds we use to express anger/joy/fear/just plain wonderment. Otherwise, we're all in a lot of trouble.

Or, none, I guess, if we can just find small kinks in every facet of the system.

* Not the British rap guy