Peas and Rice: On Profanity in The New Yorker

I just learned about Shouts & Murmurs, the capricious New Yorker column about inebriates, space aliens, terminal illness, and "Independent Phone Acquaintances." That's just September right there. If you want to catch up, go read about fourteen passive-aggressive hors d'oeuvres: "Hepatitis! (Note: This is not technically an appetizer.)"

Last week's "Easy Cocktails from the Cursing Mommy" reminded me that The New Yorker can be so stodgy. They use so many accent marks, you'd swear you were perusing French. Scads of purée, fiancées--even Kahlúa, which you won't find on most bar menus. "O.K." must need those two periods, or help us all, we won't recognize it. Never mind that it's not an abbreviation. And when's the last time you visited a shack that serves delicious, ice-cold "Sno-Kones." That can't be in the AP stylebook.

Over-the-top syntax preservation, I don't know what to say about you. You know what else makes me laugh? The New Yorker's umlaut-mania with doubled vowels, as in "reënlist." Even more absurd is the "Cursing Mommy" column which pits these conventions against, and I quote, "Phewww!! Gahhh! Disgusting!" And the mock-blog string of blue words, all in caps. At least twelve!

Which brings me to the real issue. The New Yorker's unexpected recklessness with "God damn." Or "goddam." I've never understood the second spelling. Are we supposed to think, O language gods, that we're going polytheistic on things we abhor if "god" is lowercase? Is it somehow a less offensive word because we don't capitalize it? The mysteriously absent "n" doesn't fool anybody. We don't interpret that as a strange compound word for Zeus's own personal levee.

Lots of mild curses in English are censored takeoffs of harsher ones. "Zounds," which you can still find in your local comic shop, replaced "God's wounds," and took the religion right out of it. Same with sound-alikes: "Geez," or "You scared the bejeesus out of me." But peas and rice, people! The word "goddam" is still pronounced the same way as the clearly sacred version. To flip back and forth is just frivolous. Maybe it's a sly comment on our secularizing of everything spiritual, like when atheists tell people to go to Hell. It's OK (or O.K. in certain parlance). These heathens only mean hell, lowercase. With a wee little satan for company.

De-capitalization happens. We chop the heads off brand names; remember the last time you put on a band-aid and xeroxed something? But that's unconvincing. People wear Band-aids, yes they do, and they just copy things, in a generic, non-trademarked way. So why cut God out of this? I'm sure he doesn't appreciate you invoking his damnation in such a powerful way, and then stepping back and saying, "hey man, it's cool, I meant some other god. Oh, and I didn't say the 'n'."

It's best we take responsibility for our cursing. Good news--The New Yorker has no problem spelling four-letter words. Though they sometimes add extra "u"s. Oh, Heaven help us.