We once had a colleague who never used a swear word in his whole 40 years on earth. When he got really angry, it was like, what the fish. For minor disasters, the strongest utterance was, "Oh, sugar!" I guess with the diaphanous demarcation drawn between vulgarity and obscenity, one has to be careful with choice Anglo Saxon words.
The White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington is ostensibly an evening when the president and the press can come together to let their hair down and exchange barbs. But even the president of the most powerful nation on the planet tries to avoid the odd expletive deleted. From the official White House transcript:
Doesn't exactly carry the same panache, does it? Granted, it's not as gauche as the pork-chop soup on tap gaffe uttered by another dinner speaker from the Tropics, but we do know some blue noses will be upset if the more accurate term was deployed. Surely the man who can authorise drone strikes on the bad guys shouldn't have to cull his vocabulary. Maybe he does. All said and done, "Bucket, yay, LKY is dead" would make Shakespeare weep.
The White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington is ostensibly an evening when the president and the press can come together to let their hair down and exchange barbs. But even the president of the most powerful nation on the planet tries to avoid the odd expletive deleted. From the official White House transcript:
"After the midterm elections, my advisors asked me, "Mr. President, do you have a bucket list?" And I said, "Well, I have something that rhymes with bucket list.’" (Laughter and applause.)
Take executive action on immigration? Bucket. (Laughter.) New climate regulations? Bucket. It’s the right thing to do. (Laughter and applause.)"
Doesn't exactly carry the same panache, does it? Granted, it's not as gauche as the pork-chop soup on tap gaffe uttered by another dinner speaker from the Tropics, but we do know some blue noses will be upset if the more accurate term was deployed. Surely the man who can authorise drone strikes on the bad guys shouldn't have to cull his vocabulary. Maybe he does. All said and done, "Bucket, yay, LKY is dead" would make Shakespeare weep.