Films, TV shows and music with swearing should be taxed more

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You also persuaded me I ought to not be bothered by swearing. I'm one of the more stupid people around but by and by, eventually I might get there.

I agree with you on that - there is a time and place for all manners of speech, and some people use certain words and phrases so often that it reduces their impact.... sometimes less is more.

But I don't think that government action is the best way to deal with this. People should seek out films that reflect their values. I am more worried about the effects of graphic depictions of violence.

Also, the context is important - there is a difference between having some undesirable behavior on film and glorifying that behavior.

Republicans think violence is fine, but sex or swearing should be taboo. Democrats think sex or swearing is ok, but violence should be banned.

Yeah, well ... I'm a Democrat!

Actually, both.

I don't see the benefits.

Swearing doesn't seem significantly negative to me.

I don't think that creative uses of English would be anything but contrived seeming and thus lame. Besides, if they created a tax on every sentence not containing a curse word, the English language would likely be even MORE creative, as then people would have to come up with increasingly contrived reasons to contain the f-word.

They will never lower taxes on alcohol. The reason being that I would imagine that some of those are "sin taxes" levied for the same reason of "we don't like this thing" as your swear tax. Not only that, but tax neutrality isn't something I expect the government to attempt if it has leeway to levy another tax. Finally, I doubt that the benefits will be enough to significantly subsidize any of those goods you want to subsidize. I mean, there are 300 million people. To subsidize one meal for all of them even a dollar, that would require 300 million dollars, a third of a billion. You don't think that the media will be sensitive enough to just avoid cursing at that price? Even if they didn't the subsidy would only be a few cents.


Why? To what end? It is a cultural arbitrariness. There is no reason to fine swearing above non-swearing or vice versa. Why not just fine people who don't swear? What's the difference?

The funny thing is that people unknowingly swear all the time. Gawd is a permutation of "Oh God!" - which some consider a swear, as is "Geez/Gee Wizz" which are both derived from "Jesus" (and some other ways of breaking the 2nd? commandment).

When I swear in front of my kids, I try to say ....

"fornicate me"
or
"defecation"

because then if I hear those words come back, I know where the kids have picked it up from. Thus far, I've never heard them repeated.

Is it still swearing?

I don't know.

There's even more that are or were swear words you aren't aware of - "scumbag" originally meant a used discarded condom for example. I think they should get rid of the FCC.

I am making a mental note to use these as soon as possible.

I know, right? I hear new songs on the radio all the time lately with serious innuendo going on to avoid the sensors...seems to work.

No mode or manner of speech should be taxed. Free speech is a right, not a government granted privilege.

ruveyn

Yeah, sorry if I made it look like I insinuated something else.

The concept of regulating common speech is one of the most repressive ideas I have encountered and seems straight out of Taliban or early Christian or Stalinist communist attitudes. Any so-called "right" is a social concept and is determined by the conventions of society. There is no such thing as an "inherent right". It is all a social construct agreed upon by society's members and institutionalized into law.

To enforce a ban on what is considered unacceptable speech would require a condition of supervision with surveillance equipment that would make ordinary life a nightmare and, like life under all oppressive regimes, would turn a certain element of society into intolerable informers to social enforcers and make life a living hell over a slip of the lip.

In addition I am puzzled as to what would constitute swearing. There are three basic types of swear words - religious, sexual, and anal and each has a specific terminology that can be modified substituting, for example frig or freak or fug for fu ck, or crap for shi t or bloody for by our lady etc. etc. with many variations and a formal ban would quickly be overcome by slight modifications so that the business would eventually decline into even more monstrous hypocrisy than now exists. The ban is, frankly, another example of total human idiocy amongst all the other obvious stupidities plaguing normal human existence.

Seems arbitrary to ban particular words that you don't like, especially as people will still express the same sentiments in other ways by devising new expletives. For myself, I can often be heard uttering such things as "what a load of Bolshevism" or "you son of a Bolshevik."

And Libertarians say bring on all the sex, violence, and swear words you got. Bring some drugs too, while you're at it.

Sounds like some good partying.

1. Wow... that's a new revelation, I never knew that. (yuck).

2. The FCC itself is almost a swear-word. I remember at school when we weren't allowed to swear, we'd say things like... "oh, you little F.C." (and everyone knew what it meant. So what does FCC mean?

In order to ban swearing, you'd have to ban speaking.

Yeah, there were some comedians who got around the censors by using Yiddish words (like 'putz' and 'schlong' and 'shtup') ... in many cases, those became understood words, which were then banned, or at least recognized as vulgar. In other cases, people resort to words that can't be banned ('melons' or 'jugs').

The F.C.C. is the US Federal Communications Commission, which enforces a certain level of censorship on broadcast radio and television. They fined the TV stations that showed Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction millions of dollars ... in the US, it is perfectly fine to show someone getting brutally murdered, but not to show certain tender bits of the anatomy.