It has come to my attention that some readers may have been troubled by bad language — typically scatological rather than profane in the technical sense — in things to which I link.
I try not to use such language myself. I’m quite successful in not writing that way, with mixed success at not speaking that way in fits of private petulance. I am paying the price of having set out calculatedly to shock people into recognition of uncomfortable realities 40+ years ago (the 60’s: my generation’s excuse for everything) and of picking up a case of potty mouth in the process. If you want more detail than that, go to seminary, get ordained, and become my Priest.
Further, I have assumed that all my readers are adults — not that scatological language is really adult, but adults are at least aware that some people so express themselves and are less likely that adolescents to be titillated or morally mutated by it. I have consciously scorned Facebook suggestions to “friend” adolescent and pre-adolescents within my social circle, not so that I could be a potty mouth or channel potty-mouths, but rest assured that there are no tender tykes reading the “wall” to which these posts go automatically.
All those excuses aside, it’s not worth offending people needlessly. Some of the ideas I blog about are unsettling enough already, without giving people an excuse to dismiss them for bad language.
So I won’t promise never to link to scatological writings, but I promise to (a) try to remember to bowdlerize (e.g., “[expletive deleted]”) when it won’t materially weaken the author’s style and (b) to warn readers with something along the lines of “The linked material contains language that may offend some readers.”
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 