To the Editor,

Personally, I do not belong to any political party. Nonetheless, I was forced to sit through the election rhetoric in 2024 where one party demanded that the other party was cursing far more than they. The “air was blue” to use my grandmother’s phrase. She would use negatively.

Today, the election is over and still, in 2025, “F-bombs” and age-old cuss words seem to be in every politician’s speech and even side-comments. Seems you can’t write a memo without what we used to call “four-letter words.” I can remember in sixth grade, the first time I ever used that “F-bomb” with my best friend. Unfortunately, the teacher heard me and I received detention for a whole week.

Proper speech is proper speech. It excludes the profanity of politicians of today. Lynn Meade of the University of Arkansas writes, “If you want to swear in your speech, ask yourself ‘Why? What do I want to achieve?’ Your goal as a speaker should be to get your message across to your audience. With that in mind, you should decide if there is someone in your audience who would be offended by your word and if that offense would cause them not to listen to your message. If that is the case, you should leave the swear word out.”

The offense of today’s political speech basically loses its communicative ability. Those with whom I speak, churched or unchurched remember the cuss words rather than the essence of the speech.

Someone of great wisdom claimed, “Profanity is the attempt of the feeble mind to express itself with force” That person knows wisdom. Many of those I hear speaking, would do well to pay heed.

The Rev. Jeffrey A. Mackey

Colliers