I swear quite a bit, but never in the classroom, and I don't let the kids get away with it, either. I tell them to think of it as a vocabulary exercise. There are half a million words in the English language, and they'll never get any more eloquent if they use the same five or six all the time!

That being said, I think some of the concern and/or outrage over profanity is appallingly hypocritical, and not just because Cheney and Bush pretend to be saintly while simultaneously dropping f-bombs here and there. Whenever I hear politicians waxing sanctimonious about profanity, vulgarity, and such, it reminds me of the following exchange from the movie Fat Man and Little Boy, which told of the race to build the first atomic bomb.

General Leslie Graves (Paul Newman) comes to the Oppenheimer home in search of his pet physicist. Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz) is mourning the death (by suicide) of his mistress. Oppenheimer's wife (Bonnie Bedelia) greets the general at the door and tells him that her husband is sitting in the back yard with a blanket over his lap. Then she comments:

Kitty Oppenheimer: Nursing a guilty dick, no doubt.

Gen. Graves: It is not necessary to be vulgar.

Kitty Oppenheimer: Nothing I say could approach the vulgarity of what you're building in your back yard.

This scene has always illustrated to me the hypocrisy of conservatives. How can a few words (or Janet Jackson's nipple) be more vulgar than killing thousands of innocent people? These people get all worked up over a few cuss words, but they have no problem making decisions that will result in widespread death and destruction.

Fuck 'em, I say. And the horse they rode in on!