Saturday, September 19, 1998

Cursing robs society of what little gentility it has left

By Ken Garfield

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Before worrying this morning about the apparent rise in profanity driving another nail into the heart of the culture, let me confess:

I have cursed before, more than once. My wife heard it when I stubbed my toe on a chair that's not supposed to be where my foot can smash into it. The members of the company softball team I coach heard it the dismal summer afternoon I threw wild to first base during the playoffs.

Something bad happens suddenly and "Sugar!" isn't always the first word to travel from our brains to our mouths. Certain words with a forbidden air are sometimes the ones that reflect our feelings.

But it's not the unintentional, inevitable cursing of emotional people that worries me.

It's the ordinary, everyday cursing of people and institutions -- the constant din of !$%$ that hastens the decline of civility in these increasingly uncivil times.

I love how Cox News Service reporter John Blake put it in a recent story out of Atlanta. Profanity is a verbal fungus sprouting like weeds in a garden. It oozes from CDs, TV, movies, comedians, T-shirts and 11-year-olds who say stuff that used to get us a mouthful of soap from Mama.

I used to think -- and wrote in a column last year -- that nothing burns the ears like morning-radio deejays drowning in toilet humor. Then I started listening to sports talk radio as performed by WFNZ (610 AM) in Charlotte.

General manager Michael Kellogg said he doesn't order his talk show personalities (including some Charlotte Observer sports writers) to curse. He just wants them to talk like the guys who listen to the station talk, minus the seven naughtiest words as rated by the FCC. The language of life results in a steady stream of this team ----- and that coach is an ---.

If the caller wants to ----- about the Panthers' offensive line in last Sunday's loss to Atlanta, there's no other way to put it, Kellogg explained: They got their "--- kicked. That's what happened. I'm not afraid to say that."

Kellogg went on to say that he's running a business, and that what a kid sees and hears on his station isn't any worse than what he sees on "NYPD Blue." "We're not philanthropists here," he said. "We're trying to make money. We're a business."

Anyway, he wondered, what's the big deal about cursing on Charlotte sports talk radio when this city of churches looks like it's becoming a city of strip clubs?

The big deal is that cursing robs society of what little gentility it has left, and that restraint won't return until we start showing it in public.

Topless bars (and raunchy CDs and risque TV shows) also strip society of restraint, but those are as much matters of law and civil liberty as they are personal conduct. I'm talking here about people and businesses using the power they have, and deciding that the right thing to do is to quit cursing.

What if one person quits cursing today, a radio station bans it tomorrow, and so on and so on. Who knows where it might lead?

In Gastonia, N.C., it's leading to a better atmosphere at the municipal golf course. The folks there started getting miffed about all the epithets being hurled around the snack bar and clubhouse by frustrated golfers. There are middle school kids coming to practice their game, said pro shop attendant Beth Tomberlin. This is no place for cursing.

So the golf course folks asked Gastonia City Council to more strictly enforce the no-cursing policy at the city-owned course. If reprimanded several times, a foul-mouthed player could be banned. Just the warning has been enough to clean up the language.

"It's been calmed down," Tomberlin reported. "I have not heard any since this started."

So one golf course is being cleaned up because of one commitment to stop the cursing.

Who's next?

(Ken Garfield is the religion editor at The Charlotte Observer. Write to him at: The Charlotte Observer, 600 S. Tryon St., Charlotte, NC 28232.)

(c) 1998, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).

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