All Ficked Up
(Dec. 10, 2003)

Big boys bickering
That's what they're doing every day
Big boys bickering
F---in' it up in every way. . .
---Paul McCartney

        Ummm! I'm gonna tell! Johnny Kerry said a naughty word!
        So that's what little Andy Card, White House Chief of Staff, did. He went right to the Big Media Daddies at CNN and he told on that bad, bad Senator!
        Yessir, now this is an election issue. Makes you proud to be a citizen, knowing that our chosen officials are debating such weighty matters. Why, the future of the country could ride on Why Johnny Can't Stop Swearing.
        For the record, Sen. Kerry recently told Rolling Stone that Bush screwed up, loused up, messed up, has generally made a hash of things in Iraq. Of course, he didn't say it this way---he used that word. The copulative one with that begins with "f."
        Ummm!
        That's right---he used the most popular word in the American version of English! (Okay, next to "beer.") You know, the redoubtable four-letter predicate pal that may also be employed as a noun, adjective, adverb, and probably an adjectival clause, whatever that is. A miraculously versatile term that may variously add emphasis, humor, mirth, vulgarity, anger, angst, disgust, dismay, denunciation, dismissal, shock, even joy.
        Don't believe it? Ask Tommy Lasorda.
        Quite a word!
        Because The Rip Post believes in reserving this and other earthy utterances for conversation, not the elevated confines of these cyber-pages, we will not reproduce this little nasty here. But just to be absolutely clear, we will subsitute a synonym from a foreign language. As it is unlikely that this column has many readers from Germany---with the possible exception of the governor---we employ the Teutonic equivalent, which is fairly close to its English counterpart: Fick.   (Pronounced "feek.")
        (For those of you who have yet to make the connection, get thee to a nunnery.)

         Yes, Sen. Kerry said that Bush ficked up in Iraq. And thus implied that his Iraq policy is totally ficked, and that the ficking government is out of its fickin' mind. That it is fickin' run by fickin' extremist motherfickers shilling for the fickin' corporatocracy. I think he's fickin' right, but fick, that's be-fickin'-side the point here.
        Here is the quote that bothered Little Andy so much that he demanded an apology from the senator:
        "When I voted for the war," said Sen. Kerry, "I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, `I'm against everything?' Sure. Did I expect George Bush to (fick) it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did."
        This was just too randy for Andy.
       "That's beneath John Kerry," said Andy on CNN. "I'm hoping that he's apologizing at least to himself, because that's not the John Kerry that I know."
        Apologizing to himself? Hmm. That must sort of be like investigating yourself, like Gov. Sperminator was doing to find out if he actually groped lots of women during his life (and maybe ficked them, too.) It is not known if Sen. Kerry has apologized to himself, but he has not yet apologized to the White House.
        Well, call me a crazy ficker, but here's funny thought: why should he? I don't recall Atty. General John Ashcroft outlawing bawdy language. That's Patriot Act II, isn't it?
        As for this not being the Kerry that Card knows, one must assume that Andy did not serve in Vietnam with Kerry, where lots of soldiers said "fick" all the time. Probably much as they are in Iraq today. Fighting wars is a rotten ficking business. People try to shoot the fick out of you all the time.
        But Little Andy was incensed, morally indignant, disappointed. Yes, yes, how dare anyone use "profane" language when criticizing our president! Why, such a thing is utterly alien to the American living room. Even Associated Press called it "back alley language" right in the news story! (Don't know about you, but I hear the word in front alleys, driveways, streets, freeways, sidewalks, and toy stores.) And think of the example that Sen. Kerry is setting for the children of America, who have never heard any off-color language at all. Certainly not from rappers.
        Good thing Little Andy pointed this out for all of the stout-hearted churchgoing Middle-Americans out there (who never, never use vulgarity), too, because they need new issues on which to base their vote. Fretting over "partial-birth abortion" and gay marriage while the world devolves into chaos, war, terrorism, disease, pollution, and starvation must get awfully boring after a while.
        Oh, but wait! How could it have slipped my fickin' mind? Or Andy's, for that matter? Why, our own president used very undecorative lingo during the 2000 campaign, remember? A microphone picked him up referring to veteran New York Times reporter Adam Clymer as "a major league asshole." Yes, I know, I've printed a bad word here---but, heck, if the fickin' president said it, it must be okay, right? What's more, here is what Mr. Bush told a Hartford Courant reporter when asked what his father and he discuss, aside from politics:
        "Pussy." (Not Thomasina and Morris, either.)
        Are we then to conclude that it's okay for the Prez to cuss, but not senators? Maybe so. After all, Bush said the "asshole" remark was just "tongue-in-cheek," which sounded only faintly vulgar. And it actually played well to Middle American males, many of whom regard all New York Times writers as "major league assholes," and, when not discussing politics, like to talk about "pussy," too. In other words, the Prez scored some points!
        Which brings up the salient one about Kerry.
        For a candidate who comes across as wishy-washy, ineloquent, unfocused, opportunistic, uninteresting, emblematic of nothing in particular, I'd say that Kerry's statement to Rolling Stone is the first substantial thing he's had to say in the campaign. One hopes that his remark was spontaneous, but the truth is that it was probably intended play to the "demographic" that "reads" Rolling Stone.
        And that's the obscenity here.     

BACK TO PAGE ONE