ANDY ROONEY ON OBSCENITY I
‘m increasingly aware, walking around in public, of the cacophony of obscenities bombarding my ears. You can be walking down the street with your spouse or your mother or your children, and three people behind you will be using the f-word in every other sentence. I know all the words, and nothing shocks me, but I find them, and the people using them, offensive. It’s as if they were using the bathroom or the bedroom without closing the door. I don’t want to watch. The strange thing about the common use of obscene language is that while the movies are filled with it, there is hardly any in our newspapers. People who don’t give a second thought to going to a movie liberally sprinkled with the f-word wouldn’t buy a newspaper if it used the same language. Why? It helps that it’s dark in movie theaters, and I’ve often wondered if they’d show the same scenes if the lights…
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