God bless the goddamn Onion

Is cunt still a really offensive and shocking word in the US, or someting?

yes totally

my thanks to gbx for more eloquently explaining my words above, in the spirit I meant them

I also immediately thought, having not seen the original tweet, that The Onion's apology was possibly a barb aimed at MacFarlane. Regardless of whether it was meant that way, it still is.

Surprised you've never noticed the discrepancy before, Trayce -- "cunt" is for some reason probably the most obscene word in the US! Not sure how we got there, but you could drop a "motherfucker" in the middle of a sentence and get less of a reaction.

one or two dedicated writers just do tweet-length jokes for the twitter but it's hardly essential.

― luaka boppa flame (some dude), Monday, February 25, 2013 8:08 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

I disagree it's absolutely essential and also I am looking for a job right now

i've seen your tweetfolio, i don't think you're ready for the big leagues son

you don't even know about my secret account @JODYHiGHROLLER

in case it needs piling on, I'm an AmE speaker who will happily say "fuck" in mixed company but never "cunt" in a million billion years.

(which incidentally just a couple days ago I had to tell my boss, whose first language was not English, why "Tosser", while a cute variation on our team's name, would not be a suitable name for a mascot. He was amused.)

anyway if the Onion were ever going to break character to apologize for something I'm glad it was this.

yeah i'm fine with this being the occasion where that happens, even if i think the joke was more horribly formed than shocking per se, and that the blowback has been disproportionate

I recently read a few books about the compilation of the first Oxford English Dictionary that were rather boring. The one thing I did take away was that while the OED's strivance for exhaustiveness and comprehensiveness was often compromised for the sake of contemporary Victorian morality, with words like 'masterbaton' and euphemisms for various body parts/functions either left out or given short shrift, the editors and lexicographers refused to compromise on 'cunt.' This due to the fact that it was to them, a noble word had such a rich & storied history in the language and otherwise aesthetically pleasing. I'd love to read something informative about how 'cunt' came to be the most vulgar & offensive word im North America.

just want to take a brief moment to say walloginas

Yeah, in the US, there are two words that are suffixed with "-word," and that's the c-word and the n-word. Nothing else.

And it's very interesting to see the discrepancies about how people here approach the two of them, also. They are equal but incredibly separate in power.

f-word

A lot of people liked the L-Word...

the c-word dialogue in this thread

I definitely don't count The L Word.

:)

I definitely don't cunt The L Word.

hahaha

http://i50.tinypic.com/2a6mnva.png

oh pleeeease rmde 4ever

lol

Am I supposed to laugh at the absurdity of the statement? Am I supposed to look at my daughter and think, wow, it would be really really funny and smart if someone jokingly called her the c word? How ironic.

Some people are more ironic than others........ life isn't fair but isn't that ~the opposite of what u expect~ ◑.◑

True or false: the c word in the UK is as common as "motherfucker" is here, and the word "motherfucker" is as rare there as the c word is here.

(Apparently true, if Sting's '80s concert doc is to be believed).

the people who're maddest about it (among whom, nobody'll be surprised to learn, are people I dig a lot and consider friends) are going into the "an apology is not enough!" mode which is social-justice-web for "I'm glad to have another thing to talk at length about"
haha this is so otm

this tweet was shitty and all but salon.com having like three cover stories on it seems like overkill

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, February 25, 2013 6:28 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a t-bomb in re the c-bomb

I throw the c-bomb around like the f-bomb...Mr Veg FREAKED the first time I said it, which was weird & amusing. I had no idea how verboten it was til I clocked his horrified look.

I thought the tweet was kinda funny. Ill-advised more than anything. Some of the reaction I understand...the rest of it is just ott handwringing to me, but whatever.

wish i could post this here:

http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add_strip.php?iid=85085

this tweet was shitty and all but salon.com having like three cover stories on it seems like overkill

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, February 25, 2013 6:28 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

4 at last count

lol JD

they're just thrilled they found something to cover that isn't lena dunham, unhappy mothers, or JFK

ironically, the people who are overdoing the reaction to this actually are being cunts

*thread now gets interesting*

;)

:D

True or false: the c word in the UK is as common as "motherfucker" is here, and the word "motherfucker" is as rare there as the c word is here.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, February 26, 2013 5:14 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

US English bleeds into UK English way more than vice versa (that dumb BBC article a while back notwithstanding) so that probably isn't precisely accurate but close enough

the in-my-head stat (based obviously on deep and scientific research) I have is that 90% of the time in the UK, an individual being called a cunt will be a man; 90% of the time in the US, a woman

yeah, they effectively mean different things. "mean" - express or whatever.

Cunt is def ~the worst word~ in Eng (Scotland is a diff matter) but in the right context it wouldn't raise an eyebrow. I think a man calling a woman a cunt is still pretty verboten here. Other situations, it's not taboo enough that you can't use it jokingly between friends, but has enough power that you can use it and mean it and it's effective

It's not the reason the tweet sucked though, if the Onion had used "bitch" instead it'd have been just as awful

everytime i think of the us use of it, i'm reminded of that alleged john mccain freakout at his wife.

US usage of it always makes me think of Patrick Bateman for some reason

anyway, wd the poor kid probly have been unaware of this if the commentocracy hadn't gone crazy blogshit over it?

that's the environment in which it was released tho, regardless of whether it's perceived as good or bad, it was clearly designed to get a reaction.

oh i think it was v crass don't get me wrong i'm just noting the amplificatory properties of concern commenters

Ehh, every joke is designed to get a reaction, I'm not sure that in the place the writer was at, it was supposed to ignite the internet.

Motherfucker is used quite a lot in the UK, but if it's a white person saying it then 80% of the time they're consciously thinking of Samuel L Jackson while they say it.

yeah, it wasn't so much joke not designed to get reaction, more onion + twitter + cunt + child = c'mon. but agree that noisy fussing has never done any good whether its yr local rotary club or the twitterglob.

Lex otm about English usage of the word. I use it too much day to day I think.

Are Americans REALLY touchy about it? That bit in Curb when the guy has therapy because Larry calls him a cunt etc.

Definitely. It is seen as much cruder and shocking than it seems to be anywhere else. Not sure of the reasoning behind it.

The American pronunciation is much more...forceful?