Will the GOP Ever Use English Again?

When I was a kid growing up, which was before there was color TV, I was taught there was a way to talk in public and a way to talk in private, and the two ways of talking were very different and had to be the way you talked.

In private, which meant at home, you could say what we referred to as ‘dirty’ words, which were curse words and ethnic slurs.

I could say ‘shit,’ ‘damn’ and ‘fuck’ all I wanted to in my house, but never outside my house, particularly in school.

I could call the Italians ‘wops’ or the Jews ‘kikes’ at home but never, never say those words out loud in the street. My parents never used the word ‘nigger’ because they were liberals on the question of race.

But I heard the word ‘nigger’ in the homes of some friends, and nobody seemed to mind, again because at least in my neighborhood, it was understood that this word could be used in private but not in a public space.

Growing up, at least in my family, we were taught that using what I call ‘private’ English in a public way meant that you were uneducated, and being educated as opposed to uneducated was a much more important difference than whether you were rich or poor.

This whole notion of public versus private language has now completely disappeared. And along with the lack of any…