Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
It seems that Dick Cheney isn't the only Vice President who curses:
At an event at Union Station today where Vice President Joe Biden was heralding the $1.3 billion in investments in rebuilding train stations and passenger rails, a microphone picked up one of the former senator's myriad Senate colleagues addressing him, formally, as "Mr. Vice President."That met with Vice President Biden's standard reply.
"Gimme a f*&$#ing break," he said, apparently unaware that the microphone was on.
OMG, he said a naughty word! Everyone freak out! Over to you, Worldnutdaily readers:
hey did you know during the battle at valley forge that george washinton threatened his troops with dicisplinary action if they cursed at all, his thinking was that we are a righteous and humble people and that language was for tyrannts and villians. you best read the true history books instead of the revised liberals ones whom try to discredit this nation. man, i really loathe liberals!
Right, because conservatives would never say naughty words. Anyone remember Bush and Cheney calling a reporter an asshole? Or Cheney telling Pat Leahy to go fuck himself on the floor of the Senate? Then again, this dolt did say that bad language was for tyrants and villains, so maybe this is a bad counterexample.
It it wasn't in Joe's heart it would not be in his mouth. There would be no need to watch his language. We need to say that in front of a mirror, The fact that he has lots of company is not a justification. Does anyone really stop to consider what they are saying? I think we need to analyze these by words for their actual meaning and then we might not want to be so free with them.
Right. Someone raised with the entirely invented and artificial notion that a given combination of letters is naughty even if you can say the exact same thing with lots of other combinations of letters is now telling us all to analyze the issue.
My favorite:
Profanity in all forms is normal for liberals. Ever seen a pro-life demonstration, with pro-life on one side of the street and pro-choice on the other? The conservatives will be praying or quietly pleading for life to be respected, while the choicers are spewing the most vile, hateful language they can think of. I've read that Rahm Emmanuel is legendary for his use of profanity. Hillary Clinton has an exceptually sharp tongue which has been caught on tape. The list goes on and on. It boils down to one's ethical, Christian beliefs. Most conservatives are Bible-believing Christians and are temperate in their language, prefering to pray rather than spew obscenities. Most liberals have no use for the Bible or interest in Christian principles, and it shows in their godless tirades and everyday use of profanity.
The response seems obvious to me: Fuck you.
Politics
Comments
"Ever seen a pro-life demonstration, with pro-life on one side of the street and pro-choice on the other?"
One of my good friends does escort work for Planned Parenthood. (I wish I was that good a person, but who can get up that early on a Saturday?) The pack of jackals that escorts shield women from spend the day calling anyone in a five block radius (including people going in for ultrasounds) everything from murderer to satanist to "black Hitler".
But, of course, they never say any of Carlin's seven words. So it's all right
Posted by: nedlum | March 21, 2009 9:19 AM
I don't know anyone in my circle of acquaintances and friends who has "cleaner" language than I do. Perhaps I was fated to be a right-wing Christian but somehow went astray. Despite the prissy diction, however, I ended up a nonbeliever on the left side of the spectrum. The nature of my verbal expression is just a personal preference, not a badge of moral superiority. The puffed-up, self-important whiners of the right are just flailing around in political impotence, looking for anything they can get their hands on as a cause for carping. And they're hypocrites, too, since they were uncommonly silent when Cheney was vice president and vulgarly insulted Leahy. By contrast, Biden was merely telling an old senate colleague to dump the obsequious form of address, and not attacking him at all.
Posted by: Zeno | March 21, 2009 10:01 AM
I don't understand why professional politicians never seem to be able to learn to treat a microphone as if it is recording speech. How often have we heard "unaware that the microphone was on"?
Anyway, I remember this bit from the Kennedy-Nixon debates, in response to a question about Harry Truman's saying "go to Hell". See what Nixon had to say about children hearing bad language from the President:
http://www.museum.tv/debateweb/html/greatdebate/r_sanders6.htm
Posted by: TomS | March 21, 2009 10:34 AM
Everyone knows "The Vice-Presidency ain't worth a pitcher of warm piss". - DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | March 21, 2009 10:36 AM
The WND forum really is a gold-mine of stupidity...
Bob, there's more to being a moron than using the word "fuck".
Where the fuck do people get this "information"?
...wow...
Holy fuck!
Superlatives?
I don't have the slightest fucking clue what this person is trying to say.
Yay, censorship!
Posted by: Wes | March 21, 2009 10:55 AM
Shit . . . Anyone who's read biographies of both W. Bush and even Jimmy Carter know that "fuck" is a word employed by both beyond the microphones.
I'm hopeful we'll get a comment from PhysioProf on this thread given his creativity at working the F-Bomb into nearly every paragraph he writes.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 21, 2009 11:11 AM
It is completely OK for the Christofacists (hee hee) and others of their ilk to swear all they like. They only have to say "I'll pray for you" and that makes it all better (also, ending your hate- and swear-word-filled rant of an email with "have a nice day" or "respectfully" also makes it ok and not a sin).
Something tells me I need to stock up on irony meters.
Posted by: Badger3k | March 21, 2009 11:27 AM
I forgot to add that I'm sure we could search around and find a whole lot of others talkin' with Sin in their mouths - McCain immediately comes to mind, but I'm sure the rest of the lot (from Joe the Not-Plumber to Mrs Moosejaw, to good ol'boys like Bill Donahue), but I'm not sure it is worth the effort. They never see the hypocrisy.
Actually, from their point of view, it seems like the F-bomb is a Sin, but telling someone they are an abomination who deserves to die and be tortured afterwards, forever...well, that's just fine and nice and peaceful-talk. Yep.
For a nice illustration in the creative use of swear words, I find the Rude Pundit to be very illustrative.
Posted by: Badger3k | March 21, 2009 11:32 AM
Is there tape? I always wanted to know how to pronounce cartoon swears like "f*&$#ing". I get "effstarampersanddollarhashing"...
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | March 21, 2009 12:10 PM
People should worry more about the content and meaning of the words, instead of their vocabulary.
Posted by: Charity | March 21, 2009 1:33 PM
Ironically, this hit the Conservatively staffed office I work in a couple days after someone heard about my own personal PPR rule for office conversations: No profanity, politics, or religion; the secular workplace is an inappropriate venue for these discussions, we have customers and suppliers passing through. The latter two really freaked them out, and they were questioned energetically, eventually profanely. I called them out on the swearing, this flustered them.
So, here we are with an office full of GOP christians feeling mighty self conscious, and along comes Biden's naughty word. And they couldn't say a thing about it that I couldn't casually slap right back on their plate.
Posted by: John | March 21, 2009 2:07 PM
John - great story, thanks for sharing.
I had a similar rule in an office I ran where I had some fundies harrassing some of the women and gays that also worked in my office. Though it was the fundies alone that were the only ones discussing politics, the economy and our company was doing so well at that time everyone was giddy about the Clinton years except the fundies - who hated our country's success while being run by a "godless heathen" like Clinton. The biggest topic for most people at the water-cooler was what happened on Seinfeld and then Friends.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 21, 2009 2:39 PM
"battle of valley forge"?
BATTLE???
Since when was there a battle at Valley Forge? If the guy's "historical" reference starts out with such a glaring mistake, why should we take the rest of it seriously?
Personally, I suspect the writer is full of it. Washington was a man with military experience, and soldiers curse...often a lot. I seriously doubt Washington had that big a problem with it.
Posted by: Mobius | March 21, 2009 2:47 PM
John Wilkins: You mean you don't pronounce the "#" as "octothorp"?
Quoted by Wes:
I foresee a new book in the making: The Republican War on Grammar.
Posted by: G. Broaddus | March 21, 2009 2:59 PM
I prefer "colorful metaphors'.
Posted by: khan | March 21, 2009 3:11 PM
WingNutDaily has forums? Sounds like a great choice of reading material if I ever lose the will to live.
Posted by: Dan DeLeon | March 21, 2009 3:16 PM
Don't let them get a hold of this from the President!
Posted by: Shaden Freud | March 21, 2009 4:07 PM
Posted by: Dan J | March 21, 2009 4:27 PM
You know, I hate to say it, but from the looks of the comments the "Good Christians" are doing far, far worse things with language than letting slip a naughty word. I guess grammar, spelling, and punctuation are for tyrants and villains, too.
Posted by: Alison | March 21, 2009 4:59 PM
Oh, and that's not to say you're a tyrant or villain, Ed, but look at your spelling in the title. . .heh.
Posted by: Alison | March 21, 2009 5:02 PM
Funnily enough, just yesterday morning I got to see the Westboro Baptists protest on the edge of the Harvard campus (I guess they thing higher education is gay, or something). The Phelps clan were carrying signs which said things like "Bitch Burger" and, of course, "God Hates Fags". The counter-protesters, a non-denominational and significantly larger crowd, were singing "This Land is Your Land".
Posted by: Blake Stacey | March 21, 2009 5:28 PM
"they thing" -> "they think". My apologies.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | March 21, 2009 5:31 PM
Blake, apparently they were picketing Harvard Law School since President Obama was an alum:
Shucks, I missed this one.
Posted by: James F | March 21, 2009 6:20 PM
Of course, if a Republican had said this very thing over an open mic, and someone had objected, the Worldnut and others of their ilk would have said, "you're making a big deal out of nothing", or words to that effect. Rather adaptable in their "morality", aren't they?
Posted by: Raymond Minton | March 21, 2009 7:02 PM
So he swore in a self-deprecating fashion asking for less formality? That's orders of magnitude better than swearing to insult someone which is what Cheney did routinely. The hypocrisy here is amazing.
Posted by: Joshua Zelinsky | March 21, 2009 8:47 PM
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Are you serious?!?!?!? I have seen, with my own eyes, 'pro-lifers' screaming at people walking into medical centers and what-not, literally blue in the face, calling them 'murdering bitches' and saying they should 'have their fucking heads ripped off'.
Oh, I forgot - those people aren't 'pro-life', they're 'anti-abortion'(!)
Posted by: Smidgy | March 21, 2009 9:08 PM
I can't believe how much power these people are granting mere words.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | March 21, 2009 10:07 PM
I prefer exclamatories.
Fucking exclamatories.
Posted by: DuWayne | March 21, 2009 10:08 PM
I wonder if anyone from the Religious Right Rump remembers Richard M Nixon's "look at me, I'm a tough motherfucker and a regular Joe" brand of unconvincing cursing?
Oh that's right he was a Republican, just one of the [good ol'] boys then. No 'moral' outrage to see here, move along! :| DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | March 22, 2009 12:03 AM
Wasn't there video of Bush giving the finger before a press conference?
Posted by: wrpd | March 22, 2009 12:28 AM
wrpd - But George the Lesser was making a naughty gesture not using naughty words*!
And that makes all the difference to these RRR retards. -DJ
*or perhaps Joe the Biden was simply speaking in tongues?
Posted by: DingoJack | March 22, 2009 12:43 AM
Motherfuckers!!!
Posted by: DuWayne | March 22, 2009 1:03 AM
Speaking of colorful metaphors, I wonder if the WND types took too much LDS back in the sixties.
Posted by: complex field | March 22, 2009 10:24 AM
For the record, I think the word that the person Wes quoted was searching for was not "superlative" but rather "expletive."
Posted by: G. Broaddus | March 22, 2009 11:54 AM
I don't understand the fear of certain words. For one thing, they're a part of our language. For another, they're just words; they have as much power as you let them have. Finally, most of the words involve body parts half of us have or describe things most of us do (or try to do). Also, none of us would exist without those body parts or actions.
People are weird.
Posted by: pough | March 23, 2009 12:45 AM
complex field "Speaking of colorful metaphors, I wonder if the WND types took too much LDS back in the sixties."
I'm pretty sure that most of them, if not all, aren't Mormons.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 25, 2009 12:17 AM