Political Profanity: Republicans and their F-Bombs

No one will deny Vice President Joe Biden’s gift of gab. Sometimes though, that gab ends with him choking on his own foot.

That was no doubt the case some two weeks ago as President Obama signed the health care reform bill into law. Biden was so excited that he dropped the “f bomb” to describe what a big deal passage of such reform really was..."a big fucking deal"

Joe Biden was right; it was a big deal, and why not use a well-timed explicative to explain just how big of a deal it really was. Profanity is a part of real world human interaction. Even William Shakespeare, the greatest writer of the English language, wrote ornate sex jokes for the Queen of England.

The real shame is not our Vice President’s lapses in decorum, I think as a country we are all mature enough to realize that even our leaders at the highest level don’t have pristine vocabularies.

It is a shame however, that it had to be such a big deal; that the Republicans were allowed to control the debate so much and for so long that Joe Biden’s now infamous “f-bomb” was not the only dirty word in Washington.

The truth is that the G.O.P. has made a habit out of being the party of no and have in turn been allowed to turn innocent words and upstanding policies into political profanity. For an example, one need look no further than health care reform bill.

America is the only first-world country that all of its citizens are not insured. Health care seems like an inherent right, something that all legal citizens should be afforded. It makes sense that no one should die because they cannot afford health coverage. Yet the Republicans turned health care reform into the proverbial f-word.

They have done it with others too. Socialism is a word that will send Conservatives into a mad rage; it will set Glenn Beck and his magical chalkboard on fire.

What they fail to realize is that Socialism is all around them in the form of Police, Fire Departments, EMT, trash services, public schools and libraries are all things that we pay for through taxes but do not all necessarily use. Is that not Socialism in its most basic form?

It begs the question as to whether or not Republicans would be averse to a Paramedic saving their lives, would let their trash pile up, or avoid their public library because they were all spawns of Socialism.

Their habit turning good words into dirty ones doesn’t stop there. They have successfully turned gay marriage into an abomination in some 30 states that have made love literally against the law if it happens between two men or two women.

They have turned pro-choice into murder, despite Roe v. Wade being decided law that gives government no authority over a woman and her body.

Republicans win elections by fear and hate mongering. They tout their own vocabulary of dirty words like terrorism, death panels, Armageddon, Marxism and Communist. Used to incite fear into the sheep that vote them into office, the Republican’s words are what get them there, certainly not their ideas.

Sarah Palin campaigned in 2008 by using an almost flawless disguise. She swooped in on a snowmobile touting her transparent and successful record as Governor of our second largest state. She had us all fooled, even me. She was propped up in a place of potential power to do nothing but throw red meat to the masses and did so quite well.

She could not tell us what magazines and newspapers she read but she did have the people who cast their vote for her convinced that an Obama White House would be filled with terrorists, Bill Ayers, and activism from Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

None of what she or any other Republican said about what an Obama Administration would look like has turned out to be true at all. Their words have proven to be empty as they have so many other times in the past.

Despite what the Republicans would have you believe, the words that they have made dirty are not that way at all and the Obama White House has been one filled with proven leaders, great political minds and has been a pragmatic and transparent administration.

Given the deep political divide and the Tea Party’s seemingly amoral crusade against the Obama administration it seems that Joe Biden’s F-bomb should be the least of our worries.

What should be at the forefront of our minds as a politically expedient nation is that we cannot allow a small, misinformed group of closed minded people turn good policy into political profanity.