Teens fight war on profanity?

What can anybody say about the crumbling state of our society when even our political leaders are dropping “f-bombs” and other vulgar verbal projectiles? If Vice President Joseph Biden can say the f-word at the media-covered signing of President Barack Obama’s health care bill, doesn’t it make sense that teens do the same in front of their peers and their elders for highly insignificant reasons? Well, it shouldn’t.

Why do people degrade themselves with dirty mouths? Foul language only makes people appear ignorant and uneducated, yet almost everybody does it! School rules regarding cursing mainly go unheeded, often under the teachers’ noses. Even other teens find themselves disgusted by their peers’ behavior.

“I don’t speak [profanity] and I don’t take part in it,” senior Cody Muller said.

To learn the extent to which swearing has invaded American society, one only has to listen to a normal conversation between teens. As soon as some teens open their mouths, every other word becomes a curse word.

“Teens who curse the most are trying to make a point that they don’t care what people think,” Muller said. “That doesn’t make sense because they’re making people think about them [when they curse].”

Who is to blame when students get an A in Profanity Comprehension 101?

Perhaps the media is at fault. Musicians of today–mainly rappers–lace their lyrics with swear words and profanity out the wazoo. For example, the rapper Lil Wayne’s song “High” features not only drug references and sexual innuendos, but also the “f-word” and “n-word” multiple times.

Even television news anchors are running with their feet in their mouths.

Also, after the balloon boy scandal in which a mother and father sent their son in the air in a hot-air balloon, comedienne Kathy Griffin went on the Cable News Network (CNN) as a co-host to discuss the event in January. According to The Washington Post, Griffin let slip the “f-word” during the conversation.

Despite how society is uttering curse words daily, some people are taking steps to erase the influence of profanity on Americans’ lives. According to the Oakland Tribune in California, a teenager named McKay Hatch started a No Cussing Club at his school in 2007.

“When I got into high school as a freshman, we got approval from the faculty to start an official club at school,” Hatch said on the club’s official website nocussing.com. “On ‘Club Rush Day’ there we were with all the other clubs trying to get members. We ended up with over 100 members.”

Since Hatch first began his endeavor to lessen cursing, new chapters of the club have popped up all over the country, and even around the world in countries such as New Zealand, Nigeria, Germany, and China, just to name a few.

This Hatch kid had the right idea. Profanity remains a big problem in teen and even adult society today. If we want to have any hope of crushing foul language’s influence on us, we must take action like Hatch did and encourage each other to nuke all the “f-bombs” in our arsenal and enter into a truce.