I have always liked words. This is probably because I am a writer, which means I spend an unreasonable amount of time arguing with myself over whether a sentence needs a comma. I also get emotionally attached to words that other people apparently have decided are no longer safe for public consumption.
Take “chick.” I recently heard Dire Straits’ 1985 song “Money for Nothing,” which includes the immortal line, “Money for nothing and chicks for free.” It was written as a parody of the rock-star lifestyle. I laughed. Then I thought: There is absolutely no way that lyric makes it through today’s cultural airport security without somebody confiscating it. “Chick” might be offensive. Unless it is the name of an all-female band. Then it’s apparently fine. Unless the band is the Dixie Chicks. Then “chick” is OK, but “Dixie” has to go. So now they are The Chicks.
And then there are pronouns. He. Him. She. Her. They. I am not making a political statement here. I am simply a grammar guy trying to keep up. I grew up believing “they” referred to more than one person. Apparently, “they” has since received a promotion. My old grammar books are going to need therapy.
Growing up in small-town Iowa in the 1970s, I learned a lot about the world by watching television. Shows such as “The Jeffersons,” “Good Times” and “Sanford and Son” introduced me to people whose lives and experiences were different from mine. They also taught me that racist words were wrong. Some of the words I heard as a kid were new to me, but they were not new to my friends who had been called them. That made a lasting impression. Words, it turns out, can be tiny packages containing enormous amounts of baggage.
George Carlin famously had a routine about seven words you could not say on television. In the 1970s, those words were considered outrageous. Today, you hear most of them regularly. I will not print them here because my sister reads this column, and there are some lines a little brother does not cross.
Then came “woke,” which somehow became a word capable of starting an argument before the person saying it even finished the sentence.
My point is that words matter. They can educate. They can entertain. They can offend. They can heal. They can make you laugh. They can make you cry. But perhaps the bigger issue is not whether words themselves have changed. It is whether we have forgotten that the person on the other side of the word is more important than the word itself.
So, I will keep writing. I will keep learning. I will try not to offend anyone. And I will continue to use commas correctly, even if it kills me. Because if we ever reach the point where a comma becomes politically controversial, I’m moving to Canada.
Have a teriffic Tuesday and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital newsletter
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707