WE ARE A FUCK SOCIETY
In just one movie—Swearnet: The Movie (2014)—the word “fuck” was used a record-setting 975 times. Americans use the word “fuck” to entertain, impress, and even to kill.
During the 67 minute video of the murder of Tyre Nichols by five former Memphis police officers last year, the cops are heard saying:
“Get the fuck out of the car.”
“I’m gonna baton the fuck out of you.”
“Motherfucker, you gonna get your ass blown the fuck up.”
“Get on the fuckin’ ground.”
“Bitch, I’m gonna knock your ass the fuck out.”
Americans also use the word “fuck”—just one of the more than 3800 words in the English language that begins with “F”—to express a wide range of emotions: anger, fear, surprise, sex, disgust, love, and in a slew of other personal and social contexts.
“Fuck” is uttered more than “Oh, my God.”
Every single day we hear Americans say:
“Fuck it, fuck him, fuck her, fuck this, fuck that, fuck you, or fuck them all.”
And we don’t even know where the fucking word comes from.
Linguists speculate it has German, Sweden or Dutch origins. But no one really knows. The Oxford English Dictionary says “fuck” was first used in a written manuscript in 1578 while other sources place it usage as early as the 13th Century.
Who the fuck knows.
Here’s what we do know about “fuck”:
• It got its sexual connotations in America around the mid-19th Century;
• The author/writer/poet Simon Leyland informs us that “fuck” wormed its way into the Oxford English Dictionary in 1893;
• Was first used in either a British or American newspaper on November 4, 1960 in a The Guardian article dealing with something about the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial;
• Was first used in film in 1933 in “Bosko’s Picture Show;”
• Was first spoken on television in 1959 when a grumpy old man in Belfast told a children’s program that his job was “fucking boring;” and
• Was first used in music in 1938 by Eddy Duchin’s version of the Louis Armstrong song “Of Old Man Mose.”
And I would add that “fuck” is misogynistic.
It is far too often used to degrade someone by calling them “motherfucker” but no one ever calls someone “fatherfucker.” Even the cops while beating Tyre Nichols to death called him a “motherfucker” and a “bitch.”
Fuck is now embedded in the American lexicon. The very police charged with protecting and serving society cannot even kill without a “fuck” or two.
Even our distinguished lawmakers in Congress cannot seem to get by without a little fucking. Several months ago Georgia’s hillbilly Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told a British journalist to “fuck off” when the journalist had the guts to ask the notoriously volatile congresswoman about her “Jewish space lasers” theory concerning the origin of California forest fires.
Well, what the fuck can I say …