[lbo-talk] Dumbing Down (was Can Politics Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?)

[Dennis Claxton]

>
>I'm struck by the dumbing down of political vocabulary on the Left:
>Saddam is a "monster"; "the Iranian regime sucks"; and Lee Bollinger
>is "rude."*
>
>These are children's vocabulary.
>--
>Yoshie

It's a way of reaching out to the religious, just 
like Church Marketing Sucks.  Don't you think that's a good thing?

http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/archives/2005/03/why_we_use_suck.html

Some people take issue with our use of the word 
‘sucks’, and we understand their concerns. 
Growing up, some on our team weren’t even allowed 
to use the word, and our moms still don’t like it.

Looking to the Bible, we don’t find a list of 
‘naughty’ words to stay away from. In 
<http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/index.php?search=ephesians%204:29&version=31>Ephesians 
4:29, Paul admonishes us to watch the way we 
talk. This doesn’t refer to specific words, but 
to the character of what we say. Looking through 
the book of Job and the book of Psalms, there are 
some pretty choice words used by men of God. In 
Job 3:8, Job says “May those who are good at 
cursing curse that day” (MSG). There’s plenty of 
precedence when it comes to being authentic in 
our emotions and feelings­that includes the words we use.

Which is exactly what we’re doing with the name Church Marketing Sucks.

We’re being authentic. We’re being real. We’re 
doing the same thing we’re asking the church to 
do when it comes to communicating and marketing who they are.

Profanity is culturally and contextually defined. 
There’s nothing inherently bad about any word. In 
our changing culture previously profane words are 
losing their original unwholesome associations. 
‘Suck’ no longer references a sexual act in 
today’s context. Instead, it means something 
disagreeable or offensive (some might say our 
defense of the word ‘suck’ sucks). Likewise you 
could be just as profane and unwholesome using 
clinical language­it’s the context that makes the difference.

In the end we’re trying to help the church. We 
have better things to do than argue word choice, 
and we think the church does, too.

[.....]