A brief history of cursing in the media...

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/2-7-26

 

In the author's many, many years of toiling in the vineyards of newspaper journalism, there was one hard and fast rule: No bad words in print.   

Whew! F-bombs, bird flips, other vulgarities are rampant. What in the world is our world — America is our world, Minnesota too — coming to? In my many, many years of toiling in the vineyards of newspaper journalism, there was one hard and fast rule: No bad words in print.

Of course, many of us have been brought up on these vulgarities, which have more and more made it into the media. They were inescapable if you were born and raised in America in the last century or so. Maybe before that; I wasn’t there.

 

So last month when President Trump flipped a bird to a Detroit factory worker who’d loudly addressed him about the Epstein imbroglio, it marked the first time in American presidential history that it was employed at that level, on TV, for all the world to see.

 

Then when Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis loudly told ICE (we all know what ICE stands for now, and you don’t skate on it or drop it in cocktails) saying, “Get the” f-bomb “out of Minneapolis,” also on TV, it crossed another line in public discourse.

 

I have a long history with F-bombs and bird flipping. I am not unique. Every boy of my generation is/was intimately familiar with them, some employing them regularly, others following their Sunday School admonitions and holding back.

 

As a youth, I didn’t think girls even knew about such things, so it was only among male friends that I would engage in a bit of cursing in spite of what I’d been told in church. Never at home though. We weren’t a cursing family.

 

Still, if you have that kind of churchy background, you can’t help but feel it is a sin to swear. There’s a commandment that addresses it. It’s a chance most boys chose to take, although I have known a few who wouldn’t ever utter a cuss word. They are undoubtedly now in heaven or headed up that way.

 

I actually, and vividly, remember the day I learned the F-word. I was quite young, probably early elementary school age, when a neighbor kid (I could name him) and I were discussing swearing — you know the hells and damns and the S-word (still can’t use that one in print) — when my friend asked if I knew the worst swear word of all. I guess I admitted I didn’t, and he told me it was the F- word, using it. I was so young I didn’t even know what it meant, birds- and bees-wise

 

Followed by the perfectly acceptable word “you,” it was the standard remonstrance to someone insulting or threatening you. Some reports have said Trump also uttered that at the belligerent Ford factory worker. Of course he knows it; he’s almost 80 years old. No kid of that generation (earliest baby boomer), and those that followed, could escape it. Lamentably, I am of the late Silent Generation, just a tad older. We know it too. We’re not THAT silent…or old.

 

Moving on to the ubiquitous bird flipping throughout the same period of American life, I had a middle finger flipped at me just the other day while driving when another driver wrongly believed I didn’t properly take my turn at a four-way stop. Oh, well. He was too far away to see me stick out my tongue, so I didn’t bother. Childish.

 

An American boy was introduced to “giving the finger,” as it was often called, around the same time as he would pick up on the aforementioned swear words. It was rampant among boys when I was in junior high, although in winter it was thwarted by the wearing of mittens.

 

As Trump has shown, the flipped bird is still alive and well. But what seems to have disappeared is a gestured response, which was ubiquitous when I was a teen or thereabouts.

 

Some other kid would flip you a bird and, in response, you would signal a “same to you” sign involving raising the index and little fingers above a closed fist. Everybody knew it meant “same to you.” What happened after that would depend on how aggressive each kid was. Someone could get a bloody nose. I can write bloody here, but in merry old England it’s a pejorative comparable, but not equal to, our F bomb.

 

In my years of active journalism in Duluth, we considered this a “family newspaper.” It still is, but the family has changed, with a lot of help from the president and others, along with the Internet.

 

There was a time when the column I hope you just read wouldn’t be acceptable in a family newspaper. I’m a little uncomfortable reading it myself.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Great Lakes declared not great enough by president...

Fake news: Trump to rename Great Lakes; cover bald eagle

By Jim Heffernan (as printed in the Duluth News Tribune editorial page: 1-10-26)

Here’s the latest fake news that’s unfit to print.

WASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump announced yesterday that he is planning to change the name of the Great Lakes and also rename every body of water within the northern U.S. chain constituting the largest area of fresh water on planet earth.

 

Standing atop the asphalt that recently replaced the White House Rose Garden, Trump declared, “The word ‘Great’ is not a great enough word for the Lakes, which are actually inland seas. They will now be known as the Magnificent Lakes.” He added that, “Each of the lakes should also have a name worthy of its significance to the United States of America and the world.”

 

Wearing a red baseball cap inscribed with MGLB (Make Great Lakes Better), the president said the word “great” describes things like the great depression or the great plague, even “The Great Gatsby,” a fictional character known for throwing lavish parties, created by Minnesota-born novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald (no relation to Edmund Fitzgerald or Fitzgerald, the Great Lakes Aquarium’s octopus). “These wonderful lakes deserve a better identity,” he proclaimed. 

 

Trump earlier this year ordered that the name of the Gulf of Mexico be changed to Gulf of America, a move that caused anxiety among cartographers and Mexicans and rejected by the Associated Press.

 

When asked  by a CNN reporter if the word great in the acronym MAGA (stands for Make America Great Again) should be retained, Trump charged the woman reporter with manufacturing “fake news,” calling her “Petunia,” a veiled reference to Petunia Pig, spouse of Porky, whose corpulence is widely acknowledged. Porky too.

 

When a reporter from FOX News asked the chief executive if any of the now Magnificent Lakes should be named Lake Trump, he said that would be up to the new Magnificent Lakes High Commission, which he would soon be appointing. He said he will name Rudy Giuliani chair of the commission. “If he and the others think there should be a Lake Trump to, say, replace Lake Ontario, that would be entirely up to them,” Trump responded, glancing around, winking.

 

Late last year, the president sued the Canadian province of Ontario for airing an edited version of a speech by former President Ronald Reagan, long dead, in which the ex-Republican president decried tariffs. Trump has indicated through policy that he favors tariffs, including involving neighboring Canada.

 

Besides possible Lake Trump, the existing names of the other newly named Magnificent Lakes currently are Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie.

 

“Lake Michigan has got to go,” Trump went on. “They’ve got a woke woman governor who won’t shut up.” He said that Lake Michigan, the only one of the lakes entirely in America, should now be called Lake Fabulous.

 

Regarding the largest of the newly dubbed Magnificent Lakes, now known as Lake Superior, Trump said he believes “Superior” implies that those residing along its shores think they’re better than others, “like they’re hot stuff.” The cities of Duluth, Minn., Superior, Wis., and Marquette, Mich., are ports of this largest of the now Magnificent Lakes. “They should change the name to  Lake Superb,” Trump said. “You’d only have to change a few letters on maps.”

 

Concerning new names for the other lakes, the president singled out Lake Erie, saying it sounds “spooky.” The new name should be Lake Marvelous, he said. The one remaining lake, now called Lake Huron, should become Lake Splendid.

 

The president also announced plans to annex the shorelines of Canadian territory that borders the now Magnificent Lakes. “These lakes are American bodies of water and can’t be shared with any other country, especially one whose ex-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is running around with our Katy Perry,” the president remarked, dipping into pop culture.

 

He said the annexation would also address illegal immigration of “those dangerous Canucks” who are sneaking into the U.S. through Minnesota’s boundary waters wilderness to compete with our good American hockey players. “We need to send in the Army or maybe the Navy. There’s a lot of lakes up there, they say.”

 

“The sooner we get these name changes approved the better,” Trump warned. “I’ve got a ballroom to build here at the White House and we’ll need a monument sculptor to get the face of Trump on Mount Rushmore. We’ve also got to find a new name for Mount Rushmore; it sounds too much like Mount Russiamore.”

 

Before heading to his nearby helicopter, the president added he intends to change the image of the U.S. national bird, the bald eagle. “Who wants a bald symbol?” he said, adding, “We’ve got to give him a full head of feathers.” Saying he knows how to handle such things, he declared, “All you have to do is comb the side and back feathers up over the bald pate. I know all about that.”

 

Film at 10.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

A New Year’s event that wasn’t that- all happy...

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNews Tribune/1-3-26

This was my eighty-somethingth New Year’s holiday. I’m a bit older than our current president but younger than Methuselah (see Holy Bible or jump to last paragraph). But that’s “a lotta’ welcoming of new years by anyone’s measure. Hoping for many happy returns.

 

Of course, I was a baby and small child for the first few, but sooner or later you realize what’s happening and start singing “Auld Lang Syne” with the grownups, having no idea what it means. Still not sure.

 

As an adult, the New Year’s observances tend to run together when you look back over the decades. Lots of parties with friends, a few big events, some symphony concerts, occasional dining out, some quiet evenings at home when the kids were little. One becomes another in one’s memory.

 

I do have one that stands out, and it goes way back to my adolescence. I was in my teens in the mid-1950s. A friend and I had nothing in particular planned on New Year’s Eve; we just met early in the evening and wandered around the neighborhood in our overshoes wondering what to do. Wondering as we wandered, as they sing at holiday time.

 

As we strolled, my friend — I’ll call him Larry — revealed that in his jacket pocket he had a half pint bottle of whiskey. What? Well, it was New Year’s Eve, after all. Isn’t that the biggest alcohol consumption holiday on the calendar? Isn’t it time we grew up and acted like adults? Hadn’t we sprouted hair in our armpits already? Yup.

 

So, as we strolled through a neighborhood park, Larry took a couple of big swigs from the bottle. Offering the bottle to me, I turned him down. I was still hoping to go to heaven when my time came, and boozing was believed to be high on the list at the Pearly Gates that could send you down below. Also bald-faced lying, more on which later.

 

Larry took a few more swigs and soon began to feel the effects. He was getting sick. Oh no, what to do? My parents had gone out to a gathering of close friends, so our house was empty. I led Larry to my home, where the effects of the whiskey were taking hold to the point where he could barely stand. So, he laid supine on our living room floor, groaning and showing signs he might actually throw up on the carpet.

 

I dashed to the basement and got a large, low, galvanized steel pan used for changing oil on cars, now serving as a potential barf pan, and set it by him, hoping for the best. I figured there would be ample time before my parents got home and I could guide Larry to his own nearby home before they arrived.

 

Suddenly, to my shock and dismay, I heard the footsteps of my father coming up our front porch steps. Yikes, what to do? My dad was home earlier than I expected because my mother, the organist of our church, had to play for a midnight New Year’s service. Those old Lutherans really knew how to have a good time on New Year’s Eve.

 

Upon entering, my felt hat-and-overcoat-clad father, who would mercifully be missing the church service, surveyed the situation in our living room wondering what was happening (certainly not an oil-change), as I quickly started coming up with false explanations. This is called “lying” at the Pearly Gates, another mark against you when the time comes, I was thinking. I didn’t care.

 

Gosh, I falsely explained, Larry’s sick because he had some spoiled apple cider at home earlier in the evening. My father seemed to swallow it (the story, not the bad cider), I thought, although I doubt he did. He’d been around the block a few times and was even a member of the American Legion, which had high drinking standards.

 

Well, I got Larry to his feet and escorted him out the door and to his own nearby home, depositing him inside the kitchen entrance and letting him fend for himself with his own parents. History does not record how that went or how he felt the next day.

 

I don’t recall the rest of the evening or even the arrival of the new year. This was the era when Duluth’s numerous big industries used to blow their whistles at midnight on New Year’s and I suppose I listened to that on the front porch, contemplating the consequences of bald-faced lying to my eternal salvation when that day inevitably comes. I’m closer to that day now, of course, and have probably done a lot worse things from time to time than a little fibbing. 

 

Before I go (not to heaven or hell but to lunch), a word about old Methuselah. The Good Book says he was 969 years old when he died and was the grandfather of Noah, a pioneer boat builder. Ah, the arc…oops, ark…of history.

 

Belated Happy New Year!

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.