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Oh, H-E-double-hockey-sticks
By adamg on Mon, 01/23/2012 - 1:00pm
Serious pearl clutching going on in Boston media circles today. In the Globe, one mother frets about her kids using the word "butt." In the Boston Business Journal, one father frets that his sons are now going to exclaim "suck" all the time now that they heard Tom Brady use the verb in his post-game interview:
Come on, Tom. You're better than that. For the rest of the evening my boys were going on about how Tom Brady sucked today. A bit disappointing, considering how Brady is usually a stellar role model and manages to set a great example and say all the right things. I guess I'll give him a pass on this one, surely he was caught up in the moment and was disappointed in his less than great game.
Go get 'em in the Super Bowl Tom, but remember it's not all about you.
H/t Amy Derjue for reading the Globe op-ed pages so I don't have to.
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Comments
Suck rhymes with f ...
That's almost funny, he's worried about his kids saying "suck"? Would he have preferred that Mr. Brady used a word that rhymes with suck?
She doth protest too much!
I'd recommend reading this;
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2...
Then again, he allows his children to watch what is unequivocally a violent game, then gets in a tizzy about a common colloquialism...Probably no hope for a rational discussion on etymology here.
Exactly
Focus less on the word and more on the context.
For instance, I wouldn't care if someone asked my kid to please sit all the way down on your bum, butt, heiny, keester, or ass.
I do care about exposure to a violent game surrounded by a culture of telling other human beings that they suck, stink, or are icky.
In ten years ...
These will be the kids who call home before they call 911, since they are being way too sheltered by bizarely OCD parents.
Hope these hyper-sensitive
Hope these hyper-sensitive parents homeschool their kids otherwise they'll surely hear a lot worse than suck!
Sweet Fancy Moses!
The next thing you know, he'll want to eat tacos at 2 a.m.! On a Saturday!
"Butt"? Really? Um...I don't
"Butt"? Really? Um...I don't think they would want my kid hanging out with their kids.
I'd rather read an article about the challenges of parents trying to ban swearing from their own vocabularies. I cursed like a sailor for most of my adult life and it's been much more difficult to curtail than I thought it would be.
Ha! Wait until they start watching "The Wire"
"Dad, Biff tore the axle on the 535i at the Natick Collection on a speed bump, does this mean you're gonna fuck a mutha-fuckah up?"
Disappointed
I work with youth and teens in the city and I have to admit that I was disappointed to hear Tom drop "suck" in his postgame interview. Just because kids these days are blasted by Call of Duty, F-Bomb, Kardasian-saturated garabarge doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold our star athletes to a higher standard. I understand that being a model citizen isn't in his contract but I wish that supermodel wives and ugg deals didn't trump being a role model.
Suck is not a dirty word
[img]http://www.feministe.us/blog/wp-content/uploads/20...\img]
Seriously.
more important things
In an earlier life I worked with MH/MR kids and the last thing we worried about was whether or not they used suck or butt. They had much larger concerns. To me the real problem is the obsession with sports and why anybody would expect them to be role models?
Hey Miss Ingalls...
It must have been a long commute to Boston from that Little House on the Prairie.
P.S. You're just a bad Pats fan if you think that's the one and only time Golden Boy and Role Model has used the word "suck."
Sept. 2010: http://www.thirdage.com/news/tom-brady-lashes-out-...
Sept. 2011: http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/p...
Oh, and he gave me full permission to get to the stadium early and drink up for the Jets game this year.
Here's an idea: Instead of holding people who play a game for a living to some incredibly high standard of decency that's never been met in the history of sports -- Ted Williams swore like a sailor, Red Auerbach considered "colorful metaphor" just another coaching tool, Terry O'Reilly and Mike Milbury's mouths were the least violent parts of their bodies but they still unleashed profane fury -- why don't you try some actual parenting that would put you at the moral center of your kid's universe instead of whatever duly appointed avatar is on your TV screen that night.
P.S. My sports heroes growing up included, in no particular order, Darryl Strawberry, Lawrence Taylor and Mike Tyson. Despite what you'd consider a wall of parental adversity, I was never once inclined to do cocaine, beat women or chew someone's ear off.
Can someone explain why
Can someone explain why children swearing is such an awful thing?
In fact, why is swearing considered a bad thing at all?
Stellar Role Model and Great Example
You mean other than the whole baby out of wedlock thing? That might be a little harder to explain than the use of "sucked". :)
Out-of-Wedlock
How quaint.
Like, those two totally lack the ability to support and raise a child.
I suppose you would have preferred to incarcerate the mother, never let her see the baby, and ship the baby off at birth to some "good parents" who are married?
/1950
This is what I hate about
This is what I hate about parents.
You have a kid. Congratulations. It is not my responsibility to create a magic happy world of marshmallows wherever your little snugums travels. Especially if we're in a public place. You are not special. Your child is not special. And the world is kind of a lousy place. Better they start understanding that as early as possible and be ready for it.
no problem with "suck"
But man it's a drag to have someone in a public place (street corner, restaurant, T car) dropping the F bomb every third word. I don't think parents can expect a perfectly insulated world, and I don't expect athletes to be role models, but I do think that civility in public places isn't too much to ask.
I don't have kids, and I don't think that I'm special or that the world is made of marshmallows, but I don't think it's a bad thing that cursing in public is generally socially stigmatized.
kids and the yankees
how do we explain?
Pretty simple: You raise 'em right
So much win
adam
Dear Parents,
It is not the job of a professional athlete to act as a role model for your children. That is your job. Relying on others to set an example will only result in disappointment for both of you.
This Sucks Butt
Tom Brady took responsibility for his own poor performance. This should be a role model for politicians and corporate fools as well as kids everywhere.
Meanwhile, I'm about 10 years older than Tom Brady, and when I was growing up I was VERY SPECIFICALLY told by teachers and parents that it was okay to use "suck", "butt" (but not ass), "crap" (but not shit), "fart", "gosh" (but not God) etc. as acceptable things FOR KIDS to say. Why has this changed? When did crappy butt sucking become anything you don't say in front of kids rather than things kids are supposed to say?
Not sure if you meant to
Not sure if you meant to reply to me. Anyway, I'm a couple years older than Tom Brady and the household I was brought up in did not use swear words and suck, butt, fart and crap were treated as being crude terms that wouldn't be used in polite company. That didn't stop me from becoming a champion user of the foul words, but it taught me a healthy respect for when and where they are appropriate. For example, a while back I was car shopping with a buddy. I guess the car salesman figured we were much younger than we were based on our style of dress. He was dropping F-bombs like crazy. Both of us immediately wanted nothing to do with the guy. I also worked in a very jocular office setting where F-bombs were part of the vernacular, but once you went into a meeting, you cleaned it up. As a father, yes, it is hard to break old habits and filter those words. It's also been interesting as I now pay much more attention to the words others use and frankly see myself as having sounded somewhat ignorant by using profanity in certain situations.
To the people that insist you shouldn't have to filter yourself around kids. That is your right and feel free to exercise it. If you're minding your own business and my daughter overhears, no big deal, that's life. However, if you are fully aware of the presence of young kids being within earshot or actually speaking to me, don't be jerk and drop f-bombs. It's rude and disrespectful. Plus you get to be subject of a lesson to my kid that not all people are polite (or smart) enough to use language appropriate for the setting.
Heavens to Betsy!
When I heard Tom utter that foul word, I was so startled I spilled my cup of caffeine-free peach tea all over the doily on my lap! Now I have a tea-stained doily, and I consider myself lucky for not going into cardiac arrest at the shock.
You people are harsh.
Some of us parents are trying to hold the line here to keep our kids from becoming foul mouthed both in public and at home. Why is that a bad thing? Now, we're accused of being "helicopter parents" because we don't want our kids to swear? Of course, if they were swearing in public, we'd be neglectful parents. There's no winning with you folks.
The problem is you expect the
The problem is you expect the rest of us to censor ourselves because of your needs. In other words, it's not that you're a "helicopter parent", it's that you're an entitled and self-centered asshole.
Raising your kid is not our responsibility. Nobody has to accommodate you or your kid if they don't want to. And public figures are under no obligation not to speak their mind candidly just because you might be offended.
If your kid has a foul mouth, that's not because of us. It's because of YOU. That simple.
You are right. Raising my kids
is not your responsibility. I still feel that people have to act as examples for all kids, not just according to our own selfish, uncensored needs, whether we have children of our own or not.
I have children too
And I seriously disagree, particularly when it comes to such mild crap as "suck" and "butt".
I don't consider it to be the job of the world to carefully study and follow whatever my personal bizarre sensitivity of the day or week may be, and I think it is rather selfish to conflate something like this with "protecting my children". I don't expect the world to kiss my butt and beg my forgiveness for transgressing my particular standards, either.
The world doesn't exist for my kids - it is my job to prepare my kids for the world.
FTR, they are the ones calling me out on the salty language far more often than not ...
I really hate to be the one
I really hate to be the one to break this to you, but kids tend to care a lot more about the adults that are actually in their lives than random stranger they run into on the street. It's that pesky cumulative effect thing.
Here's a ladder: get over yourself.
Not sure if serious
Unless you put you kid in a home schooled bubble, you won't have ANY way to do what you say you want to do.
Kids have friends that you can not control.
TV is much worse than one word uttered by Tom Brady (Really, has anybody watched ABC recently!)
Have you checked out G rated videogames lately?
Context and teaching them to understand right and wrong is the only thing that really matters sweetie. Prohibition from "bad words" works just about as well with cigarettes and booze. Pretending they don't exist in your world is only going to make them that much more attractive taboo to the your little balls of hormones come adolescence.
The world is out there and people are more connected then every. You can't hide under a pillow. Only instill your values in your kids by teaching them.
Dear Anon, don't call me
sweetie. It's very condescending. You don't think I know what's out there on TV, the web and in the media? I'm well aware. There's a huge difference between "pretending that bad words don't exist" (which I do not do) and teaching kids about appropriate use. Thanks for stating the obvious.
My appoligies
But it is the internet and you'd be surprised just how often the obvious needs to be stated.
Point
Taken.
So, pick more appropriate things for your kid to watch
You let your kid watch a bunch of grown men slam into each other while drunken grown men and women watch and scream insults, and then you worry about the word "sucks"?
Your choice, but just wanted to reframe it a little for you. There's a reason many parents choose TV-free, or PBS-only, or some variation thereof. It isn't the job of people on television-not-geared-toward-children to censor themselves so your kids don't hear a word you don't like.
Actually, I watched the game.
My kids weren't interested in the game. And they didn't hear Tom Brady's review of his own performance. I'm just trying to explain why some parents may not want words like "suck" to be used with frequency in their households.
^^^Concern Troll^^^
So glad you're concerned about me! Now fuck off.
One of the things that has
One of the things that has always, always baffled me is the insistence among pearl-clutchers that sports are a healthy and good thing for a young child to see, while fiction is bad, bad, awful, bad. You see it all the time "X fictional medium causes violence!"
If a guy breaks his leg in a movie, once kids get he hasn't really broken his leg and it's just fakery, they're generally fine. Seeing somebody get their leg broken in real life? Pretty damn horrific. There's a reason that as we've progressed as a society, we've largely stopped beating each other to death as a form of entertainment.
That's a mighty high horse
That's a mighty high horse you've got there!
I found this refreshing
He took full and public responsibility for the fact that he didn't play up to his usual standards. I'm actually surprised that the Patriots managed to win this game at all.
Um,
He's not a role model in MY household. He's a football player. Football players, in my opinion, have evry little to offer in the form of being a role model for children. They play a game and get paid an extraordinary and ridiculous sum of money for doing very little of import. Role models in my home are teachers, firefighters, etc., people who help others.
I think we give football payers more credit than they are due.
Get ready to explain this to your children
Randall Terry runs for president so he can put gory anti-abortion ads on the Super Bowl
I thought they took "suck" off the swear list
like 10 years ago.
Both articles are...
...fucking stupid.