It’s 100 degrees in LA today and it’s “flippin hot,” as a friend of mine would say.
This friend is very cute—the way her statements of dislike and upset are peppered with the word “flippin.” Growing up in South Africa she was raised to be very “proper.” I find it quaint and adorable.
I, on the other hand, was part of the American late-60s iconoclast generation and embraced and reveled in using real curse words as a form of “liberation.”
I certainly never anticipated what that trend would lead to. Can’t say that I like some of the results—the gratuitous violence, the celebration of the mean and perverse.
I’m not a prude, but I cringe at some of today’s lyrics and images.
I was thinking—am I just being “old”? (Good grief, how did that happen?)
But I don’t think so, really.
I realized what I object to is not the language per se but the glorification of hatred for which it acts as a carrier wave.