Greetings From The Fuck Panel

by dday

Hey, so hello from Netroots Nation in Austin. I’m sitting in Digby’s panel on language and rudeness and horrible vituperativeness on the Internets. So I’ll try and liveblog it a little bit for you, just to bring it to the comfort of your living room or office.

…The idea of the panel is about the role of language inside the blogosphere. Digby just mentioned about how blogging is taken a bit more seriously than it was in earlier days when it was an extended conversation. And so the language is a bit more professionalized. However, as we all know, she doesn’t hold back.

…Atrios just brought up the ultimate bit of rudeness in the last decade… Tom Friedman’s “Suck. On. This.” quote. “If Tom Friedman can say suck on this to Charlie Rose, I can say fuck every now and again.” If the ideas and policies we’ve been subjected to over the last several years are truly offensive and repulsive, then why exactly should the words be so horrifying?

More in a minute…

…also on the panel are Jesse and Amanda from Pandagon, the Rude Pundit, and Kevin Drum, so a mix across the “fuck” spectrum. Jesse just mentioned how people mistake profanity for anger, but sometimes it’s standing in for bemusement. When you see something so offensive, you can use it as a shorthand.

…Atrios said that when people on the right or in the traditional media throw a hissy fit about language, it’s really about removing authority and critiquing on the margins instead of addressing the substance of the arguments. That’s not to say that they are right, and we ought to censor ourselves (there are other means of marginalization). But it’s well-known that there’s an element that talks about bloggers by saying “they say nasty things on the Internets” to avoid the real issue.

…Here’s a pretty good point to throw out there by Digby. Somehow bad language has been associated with the left. Never mind that John McCain has been quoted in public making some, shall we say, untoward comments. But it doesn’t get reported, by and large. But the left ends up tarred with the brush of vulgarity. As she says, “I think the response to that is to own it and say it even more.” Kevin Drum says it about a public/private argument, that when you swear in private it’s somehow OK, but in public it’s deeply horrifying. Think of the Jesse Jackson weeklong brouhaha. They actually got an extension in the news cycle because they found another word to hype. A word.

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