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Simmons told a reporter that he was responding to “public outrage” that could lead to a “nasty discussion” and possible censorship.20 He added that decisions in the music business tend to be driven more by commerce than ethics, and sales of unedited albums regularly have exceeded those of edited ones. Of course, public sales are simply votes in the marketplace.

The natural language filter is always working, but it doesn’t always bring dramatic results. Howard Stern is living proof of it. The man whom the New York Times once called “the King of All Four-Letter Words” effectively conquered earthly talk radio in 2004 and moved to outer space as a talk host for Sirius XM for an obscene amount of money, said to be $500 million over five years.

The difference between Stern and Imus may be a matter of humor and precision. The precision of the former can help blunt his excesses; knowing exactly where to draw that line can neutralize the filter. Imus apparently had to learn how to limit his remarks. Stern already knew. In general, people enjoy a certain amount of smutty talk, but it has to be judicially tempered in the long run.

THE WASH CYCLE IS ON

There is evidence that all obscenities and vulgarisms are going through a cleansing initiated by the general public, without any dramatic threats, movie codes, or too much bleeping. People who speak Amglish don’t normally distinguish between vulgarity that is acceptable and vulgarity that is not. They tend to let the general public draw the line.

Take the age-old S-O-B put-down, for example. Excessive usage over many years appears to have weakened the phrase to the point where it is now used more as a term of endearment between two men, as in, “How’s it going, you old sunovabitch?”

Another word that has lost its shock value is suck. Originally used to describe a basic human action, from nursing an infant to a sex act offensive to some, it is almost exclusively used now to express simple displeasure or disgust without implying any off-color inference.

The actual date of death for suck as a vulgar term was August 2, 2006. That was the day when the establishment media endorsed its new viability. The online magazine Slate, a branch of the Washington Post, declared the word “completely divorced from any past reference it may have made to a certain sex act.” Since then, it has acquired enough—should we say dignity?—to be used in formal documents, such as memorial notices honoring the dead.

An example of such use is the following passage in a woman’s paid memorial notice on a newspaper obituary page of the Post that same year to tell her long-deceased mother, “Life down here sucks.” (The name and date are omitted to avoid identifying the person involved.)

Since then, the phrase has become quite common, especially for that very special message sent to honor a dead relative online or in a newspaper obituary page, or in remembrance of a birthday or anniversary.

A Google survey revealed more than five hundred such phrases, nearly all of which were in a funereal context. When the word stinks was substituted as slightly less offensive than sucks for grieving people, only three examples showed up. Sucks is clearly preferred over stinks for such somber occasions.

ACLU SOLVES ASSHOLE PROBLEM

When the American Civil Liberties Union heard that Pennsylvania state police had issued more than seven hundred citations to people for mouthing off at such things as an overflowing toilet, it sued them. The suit included Lona Scarpa who faced a $300 fine for calling a motorcyclist an asshole for swerving toward her.

The case was settled in January 2011. The police paid Scarpa $17,500 and agreed to stop arresting people for such things. A year earlier the city of Pittsburgh paid $50,000 to a man who had been cited for making an obscene hand gesture.21

THE FADING F-WORD

Even the f-word, which used to be the best attention getter, seems to be fading. To describe a sunset with it, for example, is apparently no longer considered hilarious.