Paul Kengor: Our cursing culture

This week, I came across a profanity-laced tirade from the singer Adele aimed at an audience member she sharply disagreed with. I’ll try to sanitize her statement for this community-friendly publication, which isn’t easy and which, well, underscores the point of this column: “Are you (expletive) stupid?” shouted Adele. “Don’t be so (expletive) ridiculous.”

I learned that such vulgar outbursts by Adele aren’t unusual. Here’s another example from July 2023, when she taunted concertgoers: “I (expletive) dare you. I dare you to throw something at me, and I’ll (expletive) kill you.”

Though I’m opening this column with Adele, that’s only because she’s the latest example to explode on my screen. She’s far from alone. She’s representative of a cursing culture getting worse and worse in its unhinged use of profanity.

No, these aren’t milder curse words such as “damn” or “hell,” but really foul stuff.

I’m also using Adele as an example because women, too, have embraced profanity to a shocking degree. I remember when men talked like this, and women didn’t. In fact, men wouldn’t talk that way around women. Now, they do it all the time, and vice versa. Male and female swear freely, face to face, in groups, on social media, in emails and texts.

It’s a sad turnabout. Once upon a time, women provided the corrective to such uncouth behavior. It was your mom who washed out your mouth with soap. Think of the scene in “A Christmas Story” where Ralphie’s mom sticks a bar of soap in his mouth while demanding to know which friend he learned the profanity from. The irony: It was from his dad.

Dads — men — tended to be the vulgar ones. Women were better. But, today, many women seem almost as guilty as men.

My late friend Charlie Wiley, whom I mentioned in my last column, was a keen cultural observer who often remarked on this phenomenon, having watched it worsen over decades. Charlie identified the exact time and place when he witnessed a man (the son of a prominent person) flinging around profanity around women. This was the late 1950s, and Charlie was mortified. In those days, men stood when a lady walked in the room, maybe even tipped their hats. That kind of mutual respect is toast. Women often speak as disrespectfully as men.

What’s further striking about this rise in profanity is that it’s no longer a class thing. It used to be said that such people lacked “class.” Boorish language was ascribed to lower-class individuals. That’s no longer the case. Educated, wealthy, liberal, Ivy League elites fire off profanity as freewheeling as the Trump supporter at the construction site.

The only area where I usually see a general exception to this behavior is religion. I do encounter less swearing from people who are more devout. They certainly don’t use the Lord’s name in vain like nonreligious people do. I was aghast the first time I saw the awful abbreviation “OMFG,” which outrageously sticks a profanity in front of God in “OMG.” (It was used by a young woman on social media.)

How did we get to this point? I can’t answer that, other than to attribute it to the general coarsening of an ugly culture, one that seems to have no limits to its obscenity. Whatever the causes, it’s a shame.