To The Reader’s Forum:

In 1953 I bought the most complete dictionary in America. Obscenities were not in it. Year by year, decade by decade, I have listened to the English language being progressively debauched and just about every aspect of society has become more crude, low class, rude, and ugly. And now obscenities have reached the Jamestown City Council chambers.

On the other hand, racial slurs, considered a triviality in 1953, are now taboo, especially those directed at stereotypical Democratic voting blocks. The taboo is enforced with a rigor and vengeance the obscenities, and profanities before them, never provoked. The new Pharisees are more powerful and more vicious than the old. One would think this dramatic and conspicuous transformation would be the ground for many sociological and historical studies. But we are required to pretend we don’t even notice. What is going on?

Norman P. Carlson

Busti