Do you swear...

Speaking of great women political bloggers, for my money, Avedon Carol is at the top of the list. She's so great that when I'm feeling like I'm even boring myself and I don't know why I bother to blog; I can't read her because I get depressed that I'm not that good. She weighs in on the melee over their silly thin skinned ombudsman at the WaPo with a stellar post on swearing. My favorite graf.

Now, let me make this clear: I don't think people who lecture you on your language in the middle of an argument - especially in upsetting conditions - are being "more mature" than someone who swears. Every time I hear someone claim that using vulgarity is ignorant my first thought is, "Boy, are you ignorant!" Swearing is no big deal, really. Saying "fuck" is not really special, it's just a word that is in such common usage among peers (at any level) that you might as well complain about "the". And if you think highly literate, intelligent, articulate people don't use those words, you're just plain dumb; we use all the words - we just make better sentences with them.

Read it all. It's a great take.

Update via Heretik: A deleted comment at the WaPo.

--As a longtime reader of the Washington Post, I am appalled at Deborah Howell's performance as the paper's ombudsman. I am a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and I can not imagine an editor at my former paper allowing such poorly researched material to get into print--whether as a news story, opinion column, or God forbid, an ombudsman's essay.

I guess one man's disappointment is another man's profanity. But are they men, or are they mice?