Profanity and the so-called 'culture war'

"More culture war nonsense," wrote of friend of mine recently as a comment to a post I placed on Facebook.

"If your ears burn when you hear swear words, change the channel. No one is forcing you to watch."

He continued,

If you knowingly watch a TV 14 L or higher, you forfeit your right to complain about foul language. It doesn't just come out of nowhere — all shows post the ratings at the beginning.

I mean c'mon — it's not like The Teletubbies are dropping F-bombs on an audience of three year olds.

This is about as good of an example of not being able to see the forrest [sic] for the trees as you can get. And, for what it's worth, you are really missing out not watching Ted Lasso — probably one of the most endearing characters I've ever seen on a TV show.

Try not to clutch those pearls so tightly — it might cut off your circulation.

He's talking to me like this in good fun, but his tone is still noteworthy, I think.

The great philosopher, Pocahontas, sings in her hit Disney movie: 😉

You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew

I have a friend who won't eat cilantro. I think he is missing out on a lot of good food due to his no-cilantro rule, but that's his line and he won't cross it. And guess what? I don't think less of him for it, even though I love cilantro.

I like Ruffles, the potato chips, but some bags are much saltier than normal. When we get one of those bags, I can have a handful of chips, then I am done. I try to go back and get more later, but I just can't eat them.

In fact, right this moment in our pantry is a bag of Ruffles that is so salty that neither my wife nor I will eat them. Knowing us, we'll hang on to the bag until its expiration date, THEN throw them away. 🙂 We do this in case we get a guest at the house who likes Ruffles, and who can tolerate saltier Ruffles than we can.

Note that we are not critical of those who like saltier things; we have simply decided that salty things just aren't for us.

My wife and I tried to watch the pilot episode of Ted Lasso, and it was WAY to "salty" for our taste, so we stopped watching after about 16 minutes.

It seems awfully weird to me — and frankly manipulative — that some have chosen to think of people who would like less salt in shows, movies, and music as enemies in a "culture war".

If people were turning off shows, movies, and music because of an apalling lack of vulgarity, then my friend would ALMOST have a point.

But that's not the case, is it?

People are not walking out of theaters midway through Top Gun: Maverick because it doesn't have enough f-bombs.

People are not walking out of theaters midway through Top Gun: Maverick because it doesn't have enough f-bombs.

Some people don't mind how much salt a show has, and some do — 

But the thing is, those who don't care about salt also enjoy good shows that are less salty, so it's not like the low levels of profanity in those shows exclude them from being able to watch them.

For some reason, people who don't care about salt have decided that they are entitled to look down on those who watch their salt intake.

I looked up the pilot episode of Ted Lasso online, and found that it had 16 f-bombs in 30 minutes.

Literally, every two minutes (on average) they dropped the f-bomb — and doesn't count the dozens of times they used other curse words in this short episode.

That's not perception. That's not me being a prude. That's just too much salt for some people. A lot of people, actually.

And needlessly so — which is a point so many of us are trying to make but are being shouted down.

If you pride yourself on your open-mindedness, and like to show the world how you can tolerate profanity in media —

Then please, extend your open-mindedness to tolerating people as well.

Because liking only those people who "look and think like you" do is a very bad habit.

Thanks for listening.

(And please pass the cilantro!)