Footnote to a Tweet; or How the Oslo Bomber Serves to Exemplify Socio-Linguistics

I tweeted this on 7/29/11:

(Follow me here➚ and you'll get updates to this blog as they're posted.)

I'd like to elaborate: I think NPR is artificially balancing their reporting by using what appears to be parallel construction in similar stories. I don't believe this is because the comparison is valid, I think it's meant to influence the listener apart from the facts.

Being a writer, I know well that any writer or editor can argue a nearly unlimited number of conclusions from a limited number of words, independent of being right or wrong.

Writer: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Reader: Are you saying dogs are lazy?
W: No, it's only an example; I was trying to use all the letters of the alphabet.
R: So why "lazy"?
W: Because it has the letters l-a-z-y in it.
R: So does "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs." You could have
used that.
W: I wasn't aware of that sentence.
R: I think you just want to portray dogs as lazy.
W: I think you're an alcoholic or you wouldn't have used "liquor" in your sentence.
R: That's beside the point.

Ludicrous? Depends on what "your definition of is "is"is.➚


The choice of words always provides plausible deniability; every thoughtful writer knows it, but most won't admit it. It's not a matter of whether it's there or not; it's a matter of degree and intent. If there is no intent to manipulate perception, then different meanings are due more to the differences in perceivers. As the scale is moved more toward intent to manipulate, the difference in perceptions is due increasingly more to the intent.

(Some will argue that all words are intended to manipulate the reader, that's why we write in the first place. That plays loosely with the meaning of "manipulate," but the point is taken.)

I believe NPR is purposely inserting a peripheral fact about Oslo killer Anders Behring Breivik (being Christian) to artificially encourage perceived balance.[1]

Why?

My guess is they don't trust the listeners to make up their own minds about the role religion plays in motivating terrorists, so they will do that for us, and the uninformed and uncritical thinker will gradually be influenced over time.

(And of course religion is an unavoidable aspect of our existence; we can no more divorce ourself from it than we can the language we speak or foods we eat; it's part of the filter everything passes through on its way to our brains, whether we consider ourselves "religious" or not. To say it plays some role says no more than saying I sometimes eat green beans; it doesn't make the fact meaningful.)

What did Anders Behring Breivik really think? Here is an interesting (and brief) commentary from John R. Hall, Professor of Sociology, UC Davis. "It is an astonishing and significant document, far from the incoherent ravings of a mad person, as I would wish it to be...As others already have commented, the label of 'Christian fundamentalist' seems wrong."

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2011-07-27/article/38182?headline=The-Oslo-Bomber-s-Manifesto-News-Analysis ➚

[1] FOX News noticed this before I did and I happened to overhear while flipping channels; I'm no fan of FOX News or anyone on it, but as painful as it can be, sometimes even the most egregiously misguided and annoying people are right; this is one of those times. Note also that I am not saying religion is never a motivating  factor in horrendous crimes, that would be absurd; only that in this case, the association may be unwarranted and so doesn't merit constant pairing with the word "extremist."

We Are the Latest in a Long, Unbroken Line of Survivors

When I was very young, I found a caterpillar crawling across a storm drainage grate. I felt sorry for the caterpillar, and tried to pick it up with a twig and move it to safety. But all those lumbering caterpillar legs had trouble with the wrought iron and simply fell through the grate and into the water, twirling and descending slowly and finally disappearing.

I was crushed; I can still feel the emptiness in my stomach as I watched that caterpillar sink, knowing that something soon to be so beautiful was forever lost.

As an adult, I can think of a number of ways this may have ended differently:

1) If the caterpillar had lived, he may have been eaten by a bird, and then would have become the stuff of more birds, just as he himself was the stuff of flower nectar consumed by his mother.

2) Had he lived, he may have been the progenitor of millions of butterflies after him, each carrying his DNA to a new generation.

3) Lived or died, he had uncounted (and uncountable) lives to live (or not to live) among the many multiverses inhabited by caterpillars and little boys.

As Richard Dawkins observes in River Out of Eden➚, we are the latest in a long, unbroken line of survivors. Without exception, our ancestors were all strong enough and smart enough and healthy enough to identify danger, avoid predators, fend off disease, collect food, procreate and protect, etc. If any one of them had not been, you or I would not be here.

 

Centerfolds for Dummies

I could have made my living in fiction, had I had the luxury to devote more time, and the business sense to keep my work circulating with editors. Perhaps I will yet. A career and wife and 2-year-old tend to take me from my keyboard, so what little time is left is best used for small outings like this.

(Then again, I'm in marketing, maybe I already work in fiction?)

I do believe some writers do their best work later in life, in spite of (or because of) being addled by drugs or alcohol or crumbling friendships. Capote is a good example; Music for Chameleons is as perfect as writing gets.

Read Centerfolds for Dummies, rated MA➚

[2016.01.20: In October last year, Comcast/xfinity removed everyone's personal directories, so there is no more /~cairnsc, which is where experimented with some rudimentary coding, and if you were here, why this link was broken; I moved this story to Google Drive. I know I have some other tweaks to make due to this. When my book is done and I'm blogging regularly again, I'll put my house back in order.]

Unfortunately, there are so many counterexamples (poor writing later in life), that is what usually comes to mind. Michael Crichton's Next is abominable.

(There is some suspicion that Pirate Latitudes, published posthumously and pretty good, was written earlier and set aside, but pulled out of moth balls and finished by someone else to take advantage of the brief window of popularity his death provided. Crichton himself was no stranger to opportunism, in a very benign way. Although he was sometimes at the fore of a trend, eg dino DNA in Jurassic Park, he was more often responding to what was popular and had a market. He probably worked on Pirate Latitudes when Pirates of the Caribbean was developing traction and promising a spike in interest in pirates.

It reads just like The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, etc. You can see 1970's stars and cinematic conventions on every page, and that, for me, is a wonderful treat. Crichton wrote for the movies even when writing for the mind.)

One of my favorite pirate movies to this day is Swashbuckler ➚, with a terrific set of actors that appear to be just having fun (including Robert Shaw, James Earl Jones, Geneviève Bujold, Beau Bridges, and someone you may not remember, but I do, very fondly, Avery Schreiber). Great fun from the 70's, but decidedly not Crichton's brutal portrayal, which would definitely be softened for filmgoers who want more Johnny Depp than throat-cutting.)

He had an eye on the edge of wink that hinted we were almost sharing some unspoken sentiment

I'm all for smart kids exercising their grown-up brains, but this diminutive Roger Ebert really rubs me the wrong way. He's a regular on Ebert Presents At the Movies.

Sample from the CBS Early Show...

Click here to watch 11-Year-Old Lights-Camera-Jackson Talk about "Salt" and "Inception" (embedding was disabled)

I got a lot of criticism when I was a college film critic, mostly because everyone who watches movies thinks they're a critic, but sometimes because the Calvin College Chimes had a budget that paid for the movies (or books or music) we reviewed, so I was entertained for "free" (meaning hours of rewrites and peer review and late nights doing paste-ups in the Chimes office didn't count as work; not that it matters, but I never did review a book or record at Chimes's expense, just movies).

Now this was the days before the Internet. After I was done writing my review, I would get a copy of Time or Newsweek to verify the director, actors, runtime, etc. One fellow writer who was insufferably smarmy (and probably wouldn't recall any of this) questioned my practice of looking at another review before filing my own.

(Of course, the insinuation was plagiarism, and any writer that suggest that to another knows exactly what he's doing, including the fact that by not explicitly stating it he retains plausible deniability.)

I suppose he was especially wary of being influenced by other writers, and assumed I was too. Who knows. He had a toothpick in his mouth much of the time, and an eye on the edge of wink that hinted we were almost sharing some unspoken sentiment. I think I saw something in the Calvin Alumni Spark about him being rather successful now. Winking and chewing toothpicks will take you places.

Anyway, this Jackson kid's got chutzpah and if he doesn't overdose on precociousness he probably has a career:

http://lights-camera-jackson.com/➚

Ooh, What You Said!

Sometimes when no one "gets it," it may not be because what you wrote makes no sense, it may be because your readers don't understand the subtext. (I say may be because I don't know the readers in the example that follows, don't know if they even read what I wrote, or if they did, what they thought; I'm extrapolating based on reactions from real people in other circumstances).

Case in point: I commented on a Herculodge post here with what I consider to be a very wise approach to foul language. No one commented on my comment. No applause, no boos. My guess is that the reaction was "Ho hum. If it works for you." I think what I wrote deserves closer scrutiny than that, but you can't make someone appreciate your opinion in 100 words or so, and the way blogs work of course, older posts move to the next page and eventually become a PITA to find, so after an initial flurry of activity, you wouldn't normally expect much except for the most controversial topics.

I'm not under any misapprehension that every word that trips off my fingertips should elicit ooh's and aah's. It's rather that when a valid point is made and no one remarks on it, it makes one wonder why, and you start asking yourself questions like "Did they understand it?" "Did they think it was stupid?" "Did they think it was out of place?" "Did I misunderstand something?" "Maybe it was as complete as it needed to be and no comments would have added anything to it?"

The point I thought I made was that the words that hurt people are more often not the 4-letter variety; but I have shared this with others, in person, and I think most of the time there is agreement, but that folks have so much difficulty controlling the most hurtful words (fat, lazy, stupid, etc) that they just don't want to look any more closely at it.

(Most of us who are acutley aware of what we are thinking often judge ourselves even if the words never leave our mouths. It's a rare person that rarely thinks them.)

I also think there is a powerful inclination to want there is a limited set of bad words, to believe they are bad for good reasons and you shouldn't use them, period. Just like there are bad behaviors (homosexuality) and politicians (Obama) and systems (Communism) and people (mainland Chinese - yes, listen to Lou Dobbs, is an important distinction for him, I think because he got tired of being accused of racism, which is a real bummer when you're a racist), etc.


Just guessing. There's no way to know what sort of neural networks have been built in your audience over years at the teat of family and community and media. Aside from basic shared constructs (language, physical laws, etiquette), there is, like an ice berg, vastly more beneath the surface that informs the reader, the student, the parishioner, the Nielsen household, etc.

We really don't know each other.

Damn the Rain Forest. I Paid for It and I Want It.

Let's say...

A cafe I frequent charges $1 for a cup of grog in a new cup. So far so good.

The same cafe charges 10¢ for an empty grog cup. Still good. They gotta pay for them, so should I.

During the day, if I reuse my cup, they charge me 90¢ for my grog. Life is fair and all is right with the world.

However, the first cup of the day, even if I am reusing my cup from yesterday, is $1, full price. Now I'm feeling groggy.

I've recently been reviewing this in my mind after reading an article at Herculodge& on 8 types of pride . I think that article needs a #9, the "I deserve it" pride.


If we are environmentally conscious (I try to be), we do the right thing - we reuse an old cup and pay as if we were getting a new cup. This is easy when the amount is small; if it's larger, and our ethic remains unchanged, it's more difficult.

The notion that "I'm gonna get mine because I paid for it" is a childish one from the days when we would cry over sharing a toy whether we wanted to play with it or not; it's ours and you can't have it.

But if everyone reached the same level of understanding, the cafe doesn't need to charge 10¢ for nothing and I don't need to use a new cup. The very same exchange of goods and money has occurred and we've saved a tree.

But that extra 10¢ shows up on someone's ledger and shaves a little off the bottom line somewhere. In fact, they are probably looking at the 10¢ discount throughout the day as a cost rather than a costless value-add.

Sometimes doing the right thing costs you money, makes money for someone else, or otherwise disadvantages you to someone else's advantage.

The biggest hurdle isn't swallowing your pride when you're getting shorted, but watching someone else get rewarded for nothing, which of course has application beyond paper cups.

Paradigm Shift (ha ha schnortle snrmff guffaw)

I am occasionally dumbfounded by the adoption of scientific terms for nonscientific use. This usually happens in business or media, when someone with some experience in (or exposure to) a discipline borrows a word that seems to fit a new context.

This is a common process and usually goes unnoticed. Where I bridle is when users of the imported word don't understand or respect the word's original sense and the discipline it was borrowed from; when this happens, other people in the same sphere laugh at the users because they are perceived as pretentious, but the scoffers are also missing the point, because the word has merit and sometimes a beautiful linguistic penumbra.

Case in point: Paradigm Shift. I was introduced to this in my Linguistic studies; the concept is associated with scientific theory by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift .

The paradigm shift in my field was a change from American descriptive linguistics to Chomskyan transformational/generative grammar, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax,  Noam Chomsky, 1969 http://www.amazon.com/Aspects-Theory-Syntax-Noam-Chomsky/dp/0262530074/ref=sr_1_23?ie=UTF8&qid=1311254841&sr=8-23

(I am decidedly not a Chomskyan; I lean toward stratificational cognitive linguistics; if I had completed my education I might be teaching it now. I studied under David Lockwook at MSU  http://www.amazon.com/Relations-Functions-Language-Continuum-Collection/dp/0826478751/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311261223&sr=1-2 ; I was not, however, cut out to be a linguist, and I'm sure Prof Lockwood is glad I pursued other things.)

It's not the first or second person that co-opts a word that causes the problem, it's the hundreds or thousands afterward, and the few in that social circle that recognize the pretentiousness and start snickering like 5th graders upon hearing the teacher say "penis."

(I'm not disparaging the linguistic process - this borrowing is one of many natural process by which language changes - I'm making a comment on the maturity of those who participate in it, but it may very well be that the unintentional humor is inevitable when certain speech communities overlap; would be an interesting socio-linguistic study: "Humor as a Phase of Lexical Borrowing within the same Speech Community.")

Observations 观测

The Chinese are like anyone else. They live and work every day so they can live and work another day. They cultivate and legislate and build and create and dream and regret, and they celebrate who they are. And if you were Chinese, you would too.

美国人像其他人一样。他们生活和工作的每一天，使他们能够生活和工作的另一天。他们培育和立法，建设和创造的梦想和遗憾，和他们庆祝，他们是谁。如果你是美国人，你会太。

A Christian Case for Tolerance of Homosexuality

I spent a lot of time wrestling with this years ago. It began with my fascination with Truman Capote, whom I now regard as the greatest writer of this generation. I was taught as a child not to support the lifestyles of those whose lifestyles we disagreed with. So Christians should not go to movies, buy books, listen to music, etc, created by people who would use that money to live sinful lives.

My first step to tolerating homosexuality was to divorce the action from the agent and be able to enjoy a creative expression on its own terms without regard to who created it and why he or she did when not writing, acting, composing, etc.

That didn't solve the problem, but it allowed me to compartmentalize it and define it.

Some years later I was teaching adult Sunday school and wanted to touch on creation and evolution. I asked a cousin, who participated in a primarily Christian listserve frequented by scientists, if he would ask the question and give me some insight. He did, and they did, and although I didn't find it as helpful as I'd hoped, I joined the listserve myself and simply read the threads.

One of the recurring subjects was homosexuality; a prominent contributor was a retired minister, John Burgeson, who links to his own position and many resources here http://www.burgy.50megs.com/more.htm#10

It's a complicated issue (if you start with a complicated ethic), and I encourage you to read all the materials he did. Two parts that stuck with me: 1) New Testament references by Christ to homosexuality may have referred to pedophilia, and 2) that if there is any doubt on what a Christian should and should not tolerate, he'd rather, after careful study, make a choice that does no harm.

After careful consideration and a lot of niggling conviction, I was able not only to take the same step John Burgeson did, but tolerate homosexuality as an acceptable expression of Christian affection.

(BTW, I doubt very much I'd be welcomed as a Sunday school teacher in many churches anymore.)

What Was It about Calvin College That Failed Us 30 Years Ago?

I wonder why so many of us go our separate ways after college and have little interest in those that preceded or followed us; then I think again, do I really have any interest in those that preceded or followed me? Some that were a year or two ahead or behind that I got to know, perhaps, but other than that, not really. And they don't care about my class, which I think, as they certainly do about their own, was special.

There's also a part of me that doesn't want to go back. Why should I? It was awkward. Major life events often are. If I could be sure that most of my old friends had weathered well and dispensed with most of the nonsense a religious school inculcates, I might be more inclined to do reunions and such, but alas, that is not the case. Most of them raised families in the same traditions and the cycle is repeating itself.

And so today there is open debate about homosexuality at Calvin. I applaud The Chimes for presenting both sides, even though I think there is only one that has merit. What surprises me is that the same people now lending their voice to intolerance stood up 30 years ago against apartheid, which was a system of legal discrimination in South Africa, a former Dutch colony with ties to the Dutch Reformed Church and Christian Reformed Church.

What was it about Calvin that failed us 30 years ago that we can repeat the same mistake?

I'm ashamed sometimes to be a graduate of Calvin, not for the professors or students (most of them), they were wonderful and I remember them fondly, but for what Calvin could be, and is not.

I'm more than ashamed. I'm disgusted.

Disgusted because Calvin didn't fail us. We are Calvin and we failed ourselves.

(It takes balls to publicly discuss fringe behaviors. I have a good friend who stood up in church once and asked for prayer for pedophiles. He is most certainly not one, but apparently felt a burden that he wished to lighten with the prayers of fellow believers. Good for him. Good for bringing other believers to God with an uncomfortable challenge, and good for him for bearing the opened eyes and stares of those who at that moment  wondered why.

I am not  defending pedophilia or equating it with homosexuality; I unequivocally condemn it; I offer it only as a helpful aside to understanding one man's courage.

And if you're in or entering or just leaving Calvin College now, trust me, you'll be asking the same question 30 years from now, it'll just be a different issue. Who knows, maybe it'll be the personhood of clones.

I have more to say on this; actually may be helpful for those on the fence about homosexuality; encountered some helpful insight from a minister some years back, I'll have to look it up.) 

2nd Floor VanderWerp, Calvin College, 1982

Funny, after nearly 30 years, all I have left is a photo, a few Bod Books, and a couple email addresses.

Click to Enlarge

The Only Bad Words Are Words That Hurt People

[I posted an abbreviated version of this in a comment at Herculodge.]

I developed a habit of using foul language many years ago when I worked 3rd shift at one of the stores my company operates. I was at that time between college degrees, needed a job, and went to work doing what I knew how to do - stock grocery shelves. I worked 3rd shift with a bunch of other guys, each of us entering, leaving, or skirting alcoholism and divorce, and developed a string of profanity that flowed effortlessly in pieces or in whole depending on the need.

(ROT13 this string to enjoy... Tbqqnza zbgureshpxvat pbpxfhpxvat fbabsnovgpu. What's ROT13?)

I brought up my son to understand that the only bad words are the words that hurt people. That may be a traditional 4-letter curse word, but it is far more often words like "stupid," "fat," "lazy," etc; those words, if applied at critical moments, can scar a child for a lifetime, and reinforce the behavior they are meant to change.

For many authority figures that intersected my conservative religious upbringing, this distinction is meaningless, even laughable, but as an educated linguist (who never found work as a linguist but is fortunate enough to work daily with language), the distinction is fundamental to language and relationships, as basic as phones and phonemes.

I try very hard to control my togue in front of my 2-year-old daughter, and my wife is very good at calling out the times I fail. But I will remind my 2-year-old throughout her childhood, as I did my son, who is now in college, of the same little axiom, and if she embraces it as well as he has, she will be mindful of others with every word, 4-letter and otherwise.

(Of course, the same axiom that controls language in one circumstance, liberates it in another.)

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.
--Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It's a shame that our affiliations sometimes force us underground to enjoy online activities. It is in one way liberating (we invent a new persona in order to clandestinely be ourselves), but at the same time it is a kind of bondage. We live in fear of misinterpretation and unanticipated consequences.


Two books that had enormous influence on my early political and social theory are Rousseau's Social Contract and Reveries of the Solitary Walker; even as a boy of 19 or 20, I anticipated days of retiring joy, fading energy but sharpening wit[1], long solitary walks and private reflection; to this day I am grateful that this man lived and thought and wrote and influenced as much as he did. We need more like him[2]. It is difficult to explain the connection you can feel to a historical personality, but had I lived at that time, I think I could have enjoyed many bottles of French wine and late evenings of conversation with him.

Read The Social Contract here
http://www.archive.org/details/therepublicofpla00rousuoft

Read Reveries of the Solitary Walker here
http://www.archive.org/details/confessionsjjro02rousgoog

I will read his Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality next, one of the few of his books I never got around to. (Right after I finish Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton - his last book, published posthumously, and very good so far IMHO).

[1] In the classical sense, ie, True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd/ What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd (Alexander Pope)

[2] Despite the comments of Calvin College Prof. Vander Weele, whom I respected very much, who was a Neo-Classicist through and through and partly blamed Rousseau for an unfortunate transition in European thinking. I also to this day have a soft spot for the Enlightenment period. Part of me is a humanist, fond of the order and metric beauty of Dryden and Pope. I've promised myself many times I would read Irving Babbitt's Rousseau and Romanticism, which Prof. Vander Weele recommended, http://books.google.com/books/about/Rousseau_and_romanticism.html?id=5B8bAAAAYAAJ.

All That's Missing Is the Popcorn

How is it that one messed up bag of DNA can empty 7 other bags of DNA and thousands of unrelated bags of DNA can broadcast and speculate and tsk-tsk and watch it unfold like a movie all the while bemoaning the tragedy of it all. All that was missing was the popcorn.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43677328/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

How many of us sat in front of the TV and issued a mental thumbs down as though we were the Emperor sealing the fate of a defeated gladiator.

I did.

The Truth Behind the New Bridge to Canada

It's about money. Not yours, but Manuel Moroun's, who owns the Ambassador Bridge and doesn't want to lose revenue to a publicly-funded bridge nearby.

http://www.freep.com/article/20110424/NEWS06/104240595/Detroit-Windsor-bridge-battle-Separating-out-truth


I have crossed the border hundreds of times, usually at Port Huron. There's something inside me that thinks another bridge is a good idea, if only to reduce the backups that invariably happen every holiday and summer weekend; but it's deeper than that. If you travel much to Canada, you realize how close our two countries are, and how much Canadians like Americans, even if they often disagree with our government's attitudes and policies. Canadians and Americans want it and the Canadians will fund much of it, despite some detail differences.

The problem with disputes like this is that there is always money - or sex or power or combinations thereof - at the center (to some degree on all sides). All we can hope to do is make informed decisions that limit those factors' influence.

But we too often want simple answers and too often make decisions based on simple explanations, happy as sheep as long as we're grazing.

(BTW, there are also those personality types that more often want complicated answers and are never satisfied with simple explanations. They posit aliens behind the pyramids, Incan glyphs and the face on Mars, they create elaborate conspiracies behind tragedies like 9/11 and the assassination of JFK, they presume nothing is what it seems if something else is more interesting.

They are at the opposite extreme from those that want an easy answer and prefer to think no further. Somewhere in the middle is where most people live and love and work and die, and are constantly tugged and pummeled by the vocal and violent at either end.)

Who speaks for Caylee?

Duct taped, murdered, and discarded like garbage, while those that participated in Casey's defense now smile, weep, embrace, celebrate American justice, and criticize the media, and lawyers who enjoyed media attention, while each of them walk away with enhanced reputations, book and movie deals, and lucrative cases for the rest of their professional lives.

Everyone wins, don't they?

Except Caylee.

The case is over, we move on, but let's remember that a rendered verdict does not mean justice was served or that the system works. If that were the case, no verdict would ever be appealed or overturned. Just because someone was found not guilty doesn't mean some cosmic law was upheld, it just means 12 people were convinced to agree.

I don't know of any better system, so we live with what we got.

Another Jab at Dimwitted White Guys

I know a lot of dimwitted white guys, and probably am presumed to be one by some folks, but seems me and my mentally deficient tribe have become safe targets for (attempts at) humor.

Sort of like the Nazis in the Indiana Jones movies. (Who's gonna complain? And if they do, who's gonna listen?)

Just as the monster movies of the 1950's reflected anxieties rooted in post-war uncertainty and xenophobia, so this reveals a creeping comfort with self-assertion by marginalized classes; notice that in this commercial both race and gender are referenced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe-Y-zSd5gs&feature=player_embedded

Now before you assume there's an angry subtext here, rest assured I think it's all good, just a shame that it generalizes at the expense of others.  (That's just the nature of humor, I know, but it unfortunately includes those that applaud the change.)

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis Drop the F-Bomb

Going on vacation for a bit, lot's of stuff in the works for KD8OSB's Old Time Radio Diner, but thought I'd give you a heads up about this posting. No kidding about the content; if you're offended, don't listen. Once upon a time I would have been disappointed in these two for talking this way, but I've come to love and embrace the quirkiness of my yesterday heroes in spite of (and sometimes partly because of) the little personality back alleys that make them so human.

http://oldtimeradiodiner.blogspot.com/2011/07/dean-martin-and-jerry-lewis-drop-f-bomb.html