- Playing
- Stuck on a Word
- From
- Patricia Priest
This humorous essay addresses the pleasures of cursing that counterbalance the helplessness felt when the news is increasingly infuriating and enervating.
This unusual essay incorporates an interactive component as the commentator asks listeners to curse along with her in a kind of shared litany when various culprits in the news are discussed. The curse word is bleeped out and so is never revealed, allowing each person to uniquely express themselves in a light-hearted way.
This piece aired on the local NPR affiliate in Athens, Georgia in January 2004.
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Piece Description
This humorous essay addresses the pleasures of cursing that counterbalance the helplessness felt when the news is increasingly infuriating and enervating. This unusual essay incorporates an interactive component as the commentator asks listeners to curse along with her in a kind of shared litany when various culprits in the news are discussed. The curse word is bleeped out and so is never revealed, allowing each person to uniquely express themselves in a light-hearted way. This piece aired on the local NPR affiliate in Athens, Georgia in January 2004.
Broadcast History
This piece aired on the local NPR affiliate in Athens, Georgia in January 2004.
Transcript
I'm a writer, and words are my stock in trade. I can't get enough of them. I stockpile words like Americans stockpile weapons. I make a satisfied clucking sound when I find exactly the right choice in my thesaurus. But here lately I'm finding I'm stuck on a single word. It's not in the thesaurus. And it is not a nice word.
Let me say first that I was raised as a good southern girl. Where I come from you didn't even use the word "cuss" -- much less engage in such behavior -- unless you got a fishhook caught in your thumb or something painful, quick, and unexpected like that. I remember gaily raising my hand and offering up "cussing" as an example of sin in Sunday school in about the fourth grade. My Sunday school teacher kindly cautioned me that "cursing" was a nicer way of saying it.
But current events force a racheting up of language.
It's my visceral response to po...
Read the full transcript
Ellen Yuan
Posted on March 10, 2004 at 05:37 AM | Permalink
Review of Stuck on a Word
I like this. There's this lovely, polite-sounding woman's voice counterpointed with the person's need to "cuss." The cussing points are "bleeped" throughout the piece and ask for listener participation much in the same way affirmations are requested during a religious service.