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#Post#: 356279--------------------------------------------------
More Steinberg
DIR By: LabPartner
Date: November 4, 2025, 5:23 pm
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Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times
HTML https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2025/11/04/jb-pritzker-donald-trump-obscenity-cursing
JB Pritzker says what the Sun-Times can't
The governor’s obscene suggestion to the president meshes
perfectly with our current political crisis.
One of the countless anecdotes regarding my hero, Samuel
Johnson, is about a lady complimenting him for leaving out “bad,
low and despicable words” when compiling his great 1755
dictionary.
“No, Madam, I hope I have not daubed my fingers,” he replied, as
if including dirty words would actually soil his hands. But
being Johnson, he had to add, “I find, however, that you have
been looking for them.”
No crime there. While most adults don’t search for swears, we do
notice them — that’s one reason they’re used, as intensifiers,
to draw attention, language’s yellow highlighter. Consider a
headline in Monday’s Sun-Times, “PRITZKER TELLS TRUMP TO ‘F- - -
ALL THE WAY OFF’ IN VIRAL VIDEO.”
If only more people did that.
This might be a good moment to register my personal objection to
those dashes. Who are they supposed to protect? If you know the
word — and pretty much anyone who can read knows this one — you
automatically fill it in yourself. Perhaps some would swoon to
see those last three letters in print. But they’d get over it.
We could help them. Obscenity shocks, some folks, anyway,
because it’s rare. If we used such words more, they would become
less objectionable, the way gay people rehabilitated the slur
“queer.” Gov. JB Pritzker can say the word, but the Sun-Times
won’t print it undisguised — don’t blame me, I’d do so in a
heartbeat. But as I sometimes tell readers: I follow our style;
I don’t set it.
Not every institution is so inhibited. The University of Chicago
has a stellar reputation, one not particularly associated with
lewdness. Yet parents of prospective freshmen visiting the
school were once treated to linguist Jason Riggle’s class on
obscenity. With projected charts tracking the frequency of
specific obscenities. In Rockefeller Chapel. No one complained.
Nor did Pritzker’s word choice cause a stir.
“We’ve gotten more used to politicians intentionally breaking
these rules to convey extra strong feelings,” Riggle said. “We
totally expect that. It tends to convey authenticity because
you’re breaking politeness norms — you can’t be held to them
because you’re so upset.”
Swearing is an expected transgression.
“It’s not that unusual, but it is unusual — that’s kind of the
whole point,” Riggle said.
The surprising part of this episode is how little “pearl
clutching” there was afterward.
“I had to go looking for it,” Riggle said. “The fact that this
didn’t cause more of an uproar is fascinating. That he was
talking to teachers adds an extra meta level.”
The University of Chicago has a long history of frankly studying
obscenity — well, as frankly as they could. In 1934, U. of C.
professor Allen Walker Read published a 15-page academic paper
called “An Obscenity Symbol” without ever specifying the word he
defends, arguing it is not the natural physical act that makes
such words objectionable, but our reaction: “Thus it is the
existence of a ban or taboo that creates the obscenity where
none existed before.”
Read reminds us that Americans are notorious prudes. Noah
Webster chastised Johnson “for his work contains more of the
lowest of all vulgar words than any other now extant,” and
expunged the Bible of such foul terms as stink, dung and belly.
H.L. Mencken, who beside being an acerbic wit was also a serious
scholar of language, agrees, associating increased use of
“forbidden words” with major social upheaval.
“The American people, once the most prudish on earth, took to a
certain defiant looseness of speech during the World War,” he
writes in 1936. “Today words and phrases are encountered
everywhere ... that were reserved for use in the saloons and
bagnios a generation ago.”
A crisis loosen our tongues. American punctiliousness has
obviously faded, given that we’ve elected a thrice-married,
potty-mouthed 34-time felon whose relationship with Jeffrey
Epstein, the most notorious pedophile of our time, is an open
mystery to some, glaringly obvious to others.
Riggle points out that swearing is hardwired into the limbic
system, practically a reflex. “We are built to swear,
literally,” he said, noting that people who have had massive
strokes and can’t otherwise speak can still rattle off
obscenities.
Even when our brains are dying, we can still cuss. Which might
be a useful metaphor to better understand the governor of
Illinois telling the president of the United States to “f - - -
all the way off.” We could sniff at the word. Or step back and
realize it’s a symptom of a political system that has suffered
massive damage and is perhaps dying before our eyes. Pritzker is
speaking out for the people of Illinois, against the shredding
of American democracy and the abandonment of norms of humanity
and law. It’s an obscene situation. Using obscenity when
addressing it isn’t wrong; it’s almost required.
I love JB, and I love Steinberg.
#Post#: 356286--------------------------------------------------
Re: More Steinberg
DIR By: kkt
Date: November 4, 2025, 6:28 pm
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I had to look up "bagnios": brothels.
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