Dagnabbit Nation Part II

 October 24, 2024

   Remember when the F-bomb had to be described as the F-bomb? We seem to have crossed the final threshold for wall to wall F-bombs and it kind of makes me sad, mainly because it used to be forbidden and naughty and now it's just every-flipping-where, all the-flipping-time. It has lost its panache if you know what I mean. 

   As I noted yesterday, it makes me nostalgic for Gabby and his durn tootin' creative G-Rated slang-cursing.

"Dagnabbit! This kind of pisses me off."

   This reminded me of the controversy over all the swearing in HBO's Deadwood and so I went back to see what we wrote about it, and refound this masterpiece of morality flashback.

Youthful Depravity
"The fact must come home to every observer that Deadwood's rising generation is very depraved. Go where we will our ears are greeted with profanity and obscenity from almost baby lips, while our vision is assailed by sights of the most lamentable character. These urchins are not all of that peculiar class known as 'hoodlums' for whom ignorance is some excuse, as many of them receive the kindest and best instruction at home, but from too lenient parents who allow their children to wander through the city, visiting haunts of iniquity where are exerted those pernicious influences which sooner or later deaden the most acute sensibility, destroy all sense of right and morality and inspire to an emulation of the worst characters of the town."

—Black Hills Daily Pioneer-January 26, 1881

   Every generation thinks it's smarter than the last and wiser than the next. And, by extension, I think every generation thinks they more or less invented swearing. Why is this? Because nobody can remember their grandparents swearing. My grandkids have never heard me swear and if I do my job right, they never will. So these babies get to grade school and hear the inevitable swear words and they are excited and appalled ("My grandparents don't talk like this!") So they assume it's new. I think it's safe to say, this has been going on for about three to ten thousand years, and as long as there are grandparents, kids will grow up believing that swearing is a flippin' new thing.

"I am not young enough to know everything."

—Oscar Wilde

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Long time listener, first time caller! I've been reading True West off and on for decades and just discovered your YouTube page. I love it! I've been watching on my phone between shifts at work. I really appreciated your thoughts on the new Netflix Wyatt Earp/OK Corral show. My hubby and I have one episode to go. We love history shows and especially western history. Though I'm not enough of a history buff to know when the hat isn't right! But I find the history fascinating. I liked your perspective, that this was an example of today's "kids" wanting to tell their own version of the story in their own way. I hadn't thought of it that way but it makes total sense. Thank you for recommending to the directors that they get big gun historians like Paul Hutton on the show.  I love his book about Geronimo and the Apache wars. I think with too many history shows these days that the experts aren't really experts and just offer quips, or don't say anything deeper than the narrator. (There's one younger guy named Andrew Patrick Nelson we like ton of shows these days. He is a professor from Utah. Was in the mountain man show on INSP channel that you were in also. It feels like Hutton has been in every western show like this since the 1990s! Last episode my husband said to me "he looks old" and I said "so do we!" Thanks for all that you do. I'll keep watching and reading!

—Jane Carter,