Mother Jones
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Apropos of my suggested response this morning to the most obnoxious kinds of gotcha questions, David Bailey writes in comments:
Recommended answer: “Oh, go fuck yourself.”
This is off-topic, and I may not be the first to bring it up, but it seems as if Kevin’s posts have been a bit saltier recently. I have a hard time believing he would have written this a year ago.
Not complaining or criticizing, but I just thought it was interesting.
Come on. This was an homage to Dick Cheney, people! Do our schools teach nothing these days?
But am I in fact using the word fuck more often than in the past? This is surprisingly difficult to get a handle on. The problem is that my readers are all such potty mouths. According to Google, there have been 6,330 F-bombs on this blog since its move to Mother Jones, but as near as I can tell, 6,314 of them have been from commenters. Still, that leaves 16 for me. Let’s tot them up.
It turns out that David is right: I’ve already set a new personal best this year. At my current rate I’ll double my previous most obscene year (2010). The deeply researched chart on the right tells the tale, and as a personal favor to Swami Bhut Jolokia, I’ve even labeled the y-axis.
In my defense, I should point out that this total represents only about 0.15 percent of my blog posts, an average of just a bit over two per year. Not bad! What’s more, many of those were quotes of illustrious public servants like Dick Cheney. Still, I admit that if it were solely up to me these numbers would be far higher. However, (a) I know that casual F-bombs can put people off, and (b) my mother reads this blog. So I try to stay family-friendly most of the time.
Read the article:
Are the F-Bombs Getting Worse Here at Mother Jones? An Exclusive Investigation.