We're Doing It Live

Liveblogging, sort of. It's Friday morning, and I'm at the "Different Tones and Wider Nets" panel. It's the panel discussing swearing on teh internets.

One) OK, for starters, who the hell scheduled a panel on swearing at nine in the morning? I mean, Jesus H. Mittens, at least let folks get a few drinks in first. Nine in the morning is for panels on fiscal responsibility, or closure rules in the Senate or something.

B) I am trying not to be personally offended by the fact that they scheduled a panel on swearing, but didn't invite me. My feelings are assuaged by the presence of the Rude Pundit, who can swear enough for all of us.

Roman Numeral III) No, seriously, it's nine in the morning. I'm a blogger from Caleefornia. I do less before nine in the morning than... um... leading a horse to water... with clam sauce... I forget where I'm going with this. It's nine in the morning.

My own thoughts on the actual issue -- swearing, that is, not clam sauce -- are not terribly complex. Good political or writing requires setting a tone, and more than that requires expressing thoughts not just logically, but with an emotional foundation or premise in addition to the factual one. A good writer speaks to their audience in the language required for the topic at hand, and has any number of voices; informative, angry, despairing, ridiculous, etc., etc. If you talk about America torturing people, it nearly requires the use of the word fuck. It seems insulting to pretend to talk about such a thing with pretenses of civility; we are unambiguously not civilized, if such things are subject to honest debate in our nation, and couching vile thoughts with flowery premises is, well, insulting. I long ago decided that uncivilized, vulgar ideas on the right should not be granted the airs of faux-civility; it was my decision, and mine alone. If we are going to argue over whether we should behave like animals, then we should at least remove our ties while we're doing it.

Why don't you hear more vulgarity on television? Simply put, because there are children in the room -- while blogs are niche products intended for adults (or at least, for people adult enough to grasp the sometimes-horrific issues discussed, regardless of their age) -- television and other "mainstream" sources are more publicly available, less self selecting, and therefore have far more constraints, in order to still be acceptable to parents with children present, or nuns passing through airport terminals, or just normal, everyday people who don't want to be barraged with that sort of thing throughout the course of their day.

Behind the scenes, many of these same reporters and politicians swear fabulously; they are constrained by their audiences. Our audiences are self-selecting; our constraints are fewer.

I have much more to say on this, but it's nine in the morning. I can't remember it right now. Maybe later.