Choose Your Words

Last week our fearless leader swore.

What [Israel] need[s] to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over.

Some may take this with a sigh of relief, that our President is real, that he talks like real people, that he's not afraid to speak his mind. I however have some reservations, perhaps revealing my political leanings, though I have trouble seeing this as anything but being strongly conservative.

Let me jump to one of my favorite movies, About A Boy. There's something about it that I truly enjoy. There's one part where the guy the kid essentially if he is upset, which they both know he is because his mother attempted suicide. The kid says yeah a little bit, and Hugh Grant just says "fuck."

The point is, yes there is a time for curse words, and the Middle East right now probably defines how and gives reason for a whole slew of other choice words. But the President? In that context?

As someone who works with teenagers who want to be criminals and gangsters, I hear these words a lot, occasionally directed at me, and I've said more times than I wish to think "choose your words." (A reference to parents telling three-year-olds to "use your words.") What I have noticed though is that often the kids I see do not know how to express themselves without their curse words, and if they try, they stumble, stutter, and quickly choose silence. Bush is surely not the first president to get caught swearing, nor will he be the last, but by him using such words it further gives legitimacy to them. This should not be applauded or thought appropriate or commonplace.

As far as the statement, politically, I regret to say that I have no opinion, that I don't know, that I choose silence.