In Praise of Veep‘s Beautiful Cursing: The 15 Best Profane Moments
I love swearing. I fucking love it, even. I’ve loved it since I was a child. I don’t know why it appeals to me; I discovered the dark art of the profane on the playground of my public elementary school in second grade, playing football. There was a kid named Pat in our year, one of those loud people with a bulldozing personality. He swore like a sailor at age 9, and he did it beautifully. When he said ‘fuck,’ it was purposeful, jarring, and even charismatic. Larger-than-life. He made you want to say ‘fuck’ too, and soon we were all doing it. When you’re 9 years old, swearing gives you the same feeling of freedom you get later from your first car. “Fuck” is the shitty Oldsmobile of elementary school.
Even at that tender age, I knew enough to limit my swearing to certain situations, and I maintain that ability 20-odd years later. But the allure of a good curse has never worn off, and I take pride in the ability to swear with flair. There’s nothing more painful than watching an angry person swear as though they’re tasting some exotic food for the first time. When frustration comes, I want to be able to lash out at the world with a crisp stream of unbroken profanity. It’s a psychic balm for all manner of nuisance, and it makes me feel better.
There are people who think cursing is barbaric. You might be one of them, but I can never quite understand the stiffness of the clean language crowd. Sure, I fathom their reasons well enough—I think swearing is harmless on the grand scale, while they see it as a virulent defect of character—but I can’t understand how they resist. How do they release the anger of the day? Am I wrong in thinking they’re a bit repressed? That all the sweet moments of relief they deny themselves become bottled up somewhere in the medulla—the part of the brain where anger is fomented—and coagulate into an unchecked fury mass, infecting quality of life?
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