Crudeness creeping far from ‘Holy Nutmeg!’

The other SDSU in San Diego, California, conducted research this summer on the growing use of what it termed “political swearing.”

It addressed the trend the last 10 years of our nation’s cultural attitude toward what I would call “political profanity.” If you’ve listened to television or read national news lately about what our national elected employees are spouting, you get the drift.

The study claimed using nasty words in public places and to national audiences by Washington’s so-called “elite” has increased by 87 percent in the last decade. You’ve probably heard what I’ve heard coming at us from every which way, mainly during legislative hearings, Washington office hallway interviews and even from the White House. Each political party appears to be in a race to see who gets to the bottom of the barrel first.

Right now I’d call it a tie.

Credit South Dakota’s two senate and one House employees who have refrained from joining this four-letter word fray.

Crudeness and cringeworthy words are out in the open these days, no longer limited to barns, the hog house, private offices or naval ships and army barracks. I was in the Navy for four years, and every sailor I knew had the common sense to know the proper place and the proper time.
Many of today’s national politicians apparently lack that common sense.

Sadly, we are all putting up with it. We shouldn’t. Decorum has its place, especially in the halls of Congress and the oval office.

A good example of the common sense approach that our employees in Washington should follow was and still is practiced by former Jackrabbit football coach John Steigelmeier. He’s my choice and the captain of my All-American Gentlemen’s team.

When discouraged, disappointed or to make a point, John would often utter his famous “Holy Nutmeg!” Congress and our nation’s top elected employees might try that in public rather than the profanity many now use because they think it’s cool. It isn’t.

These slivers of smut we now hear and read illustrate just how far crudeness creep has advanced during the last decade.

What will be the language bloviated by many of our elected employees fifty years from now?
Then there’s television. My wife’s father, a quiet Brookings area farmer, saw it all coming.

In 1952 he was shocked when a Maidenform television commercial was aired featuring ladies modeling bras on the outside of their blouses.
“It won’t be too long,” he lamented more than 60 years ago, “and they’ll be advertising toilet paper on TV.”

That came along in 1955 by Charmin, but the word “toilet paper” was banned on TV for a few years after that. Remember Mr. Whipple?
I’m no prude. I realize that if everyone pulled in the same direction, the world would tip over.

But Holy Nutmeg, crudeness creep has advanced far beyond the Maidenform bra and Charmin commercials.

How long will we continue to value our collective customs and life style if some among us —especially our political employees —continue down this slippery societal language slope?