Thursday, April 17, 2008

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD NOT SMELL AS SWEET: The finest of a great many fine moments in the hilarious Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Gauntlet III Reunion a month or so back came after Katie, for the umpteenth time, physically swallowed the foul language about to spew out of her mouth, explaining that she promised her mother that she would act like a lady. Coral leaned over, put her hand on Katie's knee, and said "sometimes what you need's a good 'fuck you.'" Like a balloon whose knot had just been untied, Katie immediately said 'yeah!' and bounced a series of smiling 'fucks' and 'cocksuckers' off of every nearby surface.

I mention this because I need to object to the euphemism in the Patti Smith/Natalie Merchant post below. Ignore that SS arguably (though not inarguably) misapplied the aphorism to LL -- in this context, he actually meant the euphemism, instead of the word for which Bob substituted the euphemism. My complaint is that "they dance the way they fuck" is not synonymous with "they dance the way they engage in intimate relations," because "fucking" and "engaging in intimate relations" are not synonymous. I understand that there are certain contexts in which one should not or cannot employ certain words or phrases. I like to think, though, that 51 weeks out of the year (the exception being Bee Week), this is a place where people can handle the use of the odd 'fuck' when, as in this case, there is no adequate substitute.

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