As I have previously written, presidents and other politicians using offensive language is nothing new. (In fact, I wrote about this topic as early as 2006 in a media commentary for the late, great Charleston Daily Mail, now merged into the Charleston (WV) Gazette-Mail.)
President Lyndon Johnson was famous for his coarse language, with one of his most famous examples being “I do know the difference between chicken sh– and chicken salad.” He also knew that in the 1960s his profanity was never going to find its way into print.
President Joe Biden has been known throughout his political career for letting his enthusiasm get the best of him. At the signing ceremony for the Affordable Care Act, then Vice President Biden was heard telling President Barack Obama, “This is a big f—ing deal.” President Obama got some static for calling his opponent Mitt Romney a “bullsh—er” in Rolling Stone magazine. Neither made much of a splash.
It was really President Richard Nixon who forced the press into dealing with how to report profanity. Nixon recorded every conversation in his office, and when the Watergate hearings made those tapes public, many people were shocked to hear the torrent of bad language pouring out of his mouth. When transcripts of the tapes were published, they did not contain the troubling words; instead, they were always replaced with the now iconic phrase “expletive deleted.”
President George W. Bush was caught on tape at a dinner in Russia talking to British Prime Minister Tony Blair saying, “See, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s—, and it’s over.” There was little fuss over this quote in 2006 as it was not said in a particularly public setting, and it was seen as a fairly honest statement of the situation he was discussing in Lebanon. In this case, the Washington Post did not deem it necessary to quote the actual word.
During his term in office, President Donald Trump was known for frequently using profanity in public and private, but he generated the most news for it after making some highly offensive and obscene remarks about the country of Haiti, the continent of Africa, and presumably several countries in Central America, referring to them as “shithole countries.”
But as my Seven Media Secrets state:
- Secret 4: Everything from the margin moves to the center.
So this morning the WaPo ran an article asking the question:
In the article, Maura Judkis reports on a wide range of examples:
From Vice President Kamala Harris:
- Trying to get governors to rally for President Joe Biden early this summer before he dropped out, she told them: “This is about saving our f—ing democracy.”
- “We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open. Sometimes they won’t. And then you need to kick that f—ing door down.”
From former President Donald Trump:
- “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said.
- Trump called Harris “so f—ing bad.”
Why are candidates developing such potty mouths these days? Judkis gives a host of reasons:
- It can make candidates seem more relatable.
- It can be cathartic.
- It can be to break taboos.
She goes on to note that profanity can be used in multiple ways. Harris, for example, tends to use profanity as a tool for emphasis, while Trump tends to use it as an insult.
But it could also be because it coarse speech is becoming more acceptable following Trump’s first term. Toward the end, Judkis writes:
Criticism of Harris’s swearing has not been nearly as pointed as it was for [Hillary] Clinton — a sign that language and manners are evolving. (Whether that’s in a positive or negative direction is up for interpretation.) Or maybe we’re actually ready to focus on the issues, and not the utterances.
In other words, Everything from the margin moves to the center.