That was then. This is @#*!%.
Or the F word. Or expletive deleted. Or what have you: the powers of expurgated invention fail me. What does it mean that today it means nothing when the vice president unrepentantly uses a word in public that this magazine won’t use in print? It means that standards have changed since 1962. Not just standards of obscenity–standards of masculinity.
Dick Cheney’s decision to advise Sen. Patrick Leahy to perform an anatomically impossible sex act (thereby creating a journalistically impossible quotation situation) has been discussed in terms of the rise of the potty mouth. After all, the F word is still considered so beyond the pale that when Bono used it at the Golden Globes, the chair of the FCC called it “abhorrent,” and when John Kerry paired it with “up” to describe Iraq policy in a interview, the president’s chief of staff described himself as “disappointed.”
The Cheney flap triggers the hypocrisy meter, since neither of those (Republican) officials has described the vice president’s language as abhorrent or disappointing. And it raises the trickle-down question, too. If the vice president of the country feels comfortable–nay, exultant–about using the word on the Senate floor, can the vice president of the student council be far behind? I can’t wait for the principal’s reaction the first time a smart teenager offers the Cheney defense verbatim:
“He had challenged my integrity. And I didn’t like that. But most of all I didn’t like the fact that after he had done so, then he wanted to act like everything’s peaches and cream. And I informed him of my view of his conduct in no uncertain terms. And, as I say, I felt better afterwards.”
But the most enduring lesson of this event has more to do with what passes for a guy than what passes for a role model. Slinging obscenities has always been the verbal equivalent of towel snapping; cursing the senator, who has harped on Cheney’s connection to defense contractor Halliburton and its connection to lucrative contracts in Iraq, was the closest the vice president could come to throwing a punch. It wasn’t the first time the administration gloried in being faux hard core; it was to Cheney that George W. Bush made the comment that a New York Times reporter was, to stick with euphemisms, a major-league sphincter, and it was the vice president who responded jovially, “Big time.”
To appreciate just how much of this is macho, consider what the response would have been had Sen. Hillary Clinton used the same word the vice president (or Senator Kerry) did. Or look at an exchange on CNN about the Cheney remark. Tucker Carlson accuses Paul Begala of being “angry, like a little girl.” Begala says Cheney is “a baby–he needs a diaper.” Whoa. Testosterone alert, big time.
One interesting aspect of this presidential race is that by traditional standards, Kerry has the masculinity factor sewn up; an inveterate jock and a war hero trumps a former cheerleader and a stay-at-home guardsman. But in recent years the Republican hard guys have taken over the Y-chromosome territory from the feel-your-pain Democrats, and Bush’s persona–the reformed party animal, the laconic rancher, the anti-intellectual C student–dovetails perfectly with the Zeitgeist of the new GOP. When he said that he wanted Osama bin Laden dead or alive, it was a John Wayne moment.
The vice president is not a cowboy-boots kind of character, and a public spat between two bald guys in glasses is more faculty lounge than O.K. Corral. It takes one of them unleashing the F word to give a street spin to the hissy fit, to show that he won’t take any you-know-what from the sphincters who make his life hell. (Thank God–finally a profanity I can use.) This is supposed to tell the world that he’s a real man.
Macho posturing has always been part of politics; it’s one reason women have found it hard to break into the business. But what constitutes male is in the eye, or the ear, of the beholder. Kennedy obviously thought being seen as crude would lessen his stature. But in the current climate, being seen as too polite or too sensitive is considered weak. Frat-boy locutions are the equivalent of biceps tattoos for the suit-and-tie crowd.
This is not particularly useful in elevating the tone in Washington, or in trying to show kids that the reflexive use of certain words is the last refuge of those who are neither intelligent nor thoughtful enough to plumb a more varied vocabulary. It brings out the worst in everyone; I’m personally tempted to advise the vice president to–aw, never mind. That’s a guy thing. Besides, the bosses here set a higher official standard than the ones at the White House do.
