A. J., I Am So Tired of the, "F" Word!

The shortest job tenure I ever heard of involved a man hired to help set the stage at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.   This poor, over-eager soul, immediately (with way too much enthusiasm and not near enough training) pushed the concert grand piano right off its wheeled movers.  The piano went off the dollies and down a few feet into the partially lowered pit.  You could hear every string in that sounding board ping as they broke apart, one after another.  The poor fellow turned around and left the building, grabbing his lunch bucket on the way out.  I actually think he should have stayed, been in-serviced and given a second try.  I don’t feel that way about our next subject.

The second shortest job I know of clearly belongs to fledgling local news anchor, A. J. Clemente.  He was fired recently after his first-ever words on Bismark, North Dakota’s NBC affiliate, KFYR, were, “f---ing sh-t.”  No, those aren’t the description of the words; those are the words themselves, minus the hyphens and including the vowel sounds.  Clemente was immediately suspended and, hours later, fired.  His co-anchor, Van Thieu, who had introduced him in an amazingly uncomfortable and disjointed dialogue that speaks to an already, “less than perfect” working relationship, seemed as shocked by his words as the public.  A. J. graciously, “tweeted” his apologies and thanks to listeners and then made a lame joke about his firing.  His fifteen minutes of fame were completed on The Late Show with David Letterman. 

Clemente’s meager defense seems to be that he didn’t know his microphone was on.  Do they not teach these journalistic wannabes that all microphones are presumed to be on?  Oh, wait, I forgot, there are no schools of journalism any more.  There are only places where you can pay money, listen to self-congratulatory liberals roll around in the slop of politically correct ideas, and then buy your journalism degree at the end of several years of living off Mom and Dad’s money and/or the taxpayers’ largesse.   So poor Mr. Clemente, undoubtedly the spawn of this thin pseudo-academic pool, was poorly prepared for his career of looking good on television while reading copy that someone else writes and nobody researches.  And his excuse is that he didn’t know the, “mic” was on.  I can see why his appropriate market share couldn’t even live up to Bismark’s demographic. 

Did it ever occur to Mr. Clemente that he shouldn’t be saying things like that at all?  Not in public, not aloud, certainly not in front of a female co-worker!  [Never mind that most young women think that the heart of feminism is being able to swear like a sailor.]

I am so (SO!!!) tired of people using the f-word like it is a mark of punctuation!   There was a time when people were expected to show emotional extremity, or righteous indignation, or even quasi-humorous expletive through the studied use of vocabulary.  What was wrong with that?  It required intelligence, discipline and restraint.  Those are all good things.  Quite frankly, when I hear total strangers substitute vulgarities for vocabulary I assume they are too lazy or too stupid to engage in serious discourse and treat them accordingly. 

I don’t allow the N-word to be used around me--ever.  No woman allows the C-bomb to be used in her presence.  So why should anyone think that I would want to be exposed to their vulgar, unthinking, and insulting use of the F-word.  I categorically (or incontrovertibly, or unreservedly…you get my point) hate that word. 

Reject baseness; embrace quality; keep the faith.