I hear them uttered while I'm walking through the mall, with all kinds of accents attached to them, from unknown Eastern European to something South American.
I hear them on TV, if I'm watching something racy on HBO, that is.
I hear them, or better yet, see them mouthed on TV, along the sidelines of a football game by a coach whose team just got burned by a penalty flag or a challenged call not overturned. Cameras are oh so quick to zoom in on the colorful coach who TV directors calling the shots and camera angles from the truck know are mouthing something unprintable.
Rex Ryan, says the director, we love you. We can't hear what you're saying, we can't retransmit what you're saying and we can't let our announcers and sideline reporters repeat what they know you just said. But we can let our viewers, ages 9 to 90, watch you mouth the f-bomb.
Networks live for these moments. Or so it seems. It's ESPN's Jon Gruden as he guided the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl championship. It's Ozzie Guillen, as he rants over a call against his White Sox or angrily laments over the firing of his son from the Sox organization because his son tweeted something as foul as Ozzie often launches aloud.
We laugh. We repeat the word aloud. In our living rooms, comfortably ensconced on our couches and recliners. We chuckle over it. We profess admiration and respect for the athletes and coaches who don't hesitate to utter an f-bomb when it suits them over a play that has gone against them.
It's gotten so commonplace in sports that it has completely spilled over into life. Hey, if it's OK for some of our sporting heroes to mumble f-bombs that are easily recognized by even the most-casual of lip readers watching live on a Sunday afternoon or in prime time, then we figure it's OK for us to do it too. And our kids.
Athletes and sportsmen profess to not be role models. Yet, they mutter the f-bomb word regularly and follow it up with a "WTF."
WTF? What the (f-bomb) does that mean? Uh, that's exactly what it means. Athletes and coaches are the people Americans look up to, yet they f-bomb away freely, on HBO documentary specials covering football teams in training camp or, as aforementioned, along the sidelines when questioning what they feel is a bad call or what should become or should have become an overturned call upon the flinging of the f-bombing challenge flag.
Fans in front of their TVs and all throughout sold-out stadiums and high school gyms utter the word over and over. Sometimes they use the "push it" chant in unison to simulate their feelings for a call with which they disagree. "Push it, push it."
Get it, get it?
So, next time your 9-year old lets an f-bomb rip or mutters "WTF" when asking what this sordid-looking vegetable is you're trying to get him or her to eat, remember, they either got it listening to you yell at the TV when a call went against your team or when the coach or manager made a questionable decision with which you disagreed.
Or they watched Rex Ryan or Ozzie Guillen repeat it over and over.
Funny, I watched Rex Ryan play ball in high school when he roamed sideline to sideline for his alma mater, Stevenson, in Lincolnshire, Ill. Don't recall hearing him say the f-bomb then, although he likely did under his breath, trash-talking an opponent out of earshot of a referee. I've heard it all walking the sidelines at football games, from coaches, players and most definitely fans.
Schools and park districts have instituted rules that spectators and participants for that matter can't utter language like that and get away with it. There will be a penalty, a technical foul, maybe a dismissal from the game.
As fans cheer the offender being chased off the field, someone, somewhere in the arena is asking, "WTF?" But when it's your turn, don't forget to carefully craft your answer to your kid when he or she inquires about the dismissal of said player, coach or fan by asking you the same thing. And don't have a surprised look on your face when that happens while your kid has an innocent look and the built-in excuse that he lip-read Rex Ryan and Ozzie Guillen doing it.
I mean, after all, WTF?
***
Howard Schlossberg is editor of the "Journal of Sports Media," a twice yearly academic research-based publication featuring the latest and best on trends in the genre from the best minds studying it in the industry. He's also an associate professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago and a sports correspondent for "The Daily Herald," a Paddock Publications product out of Arlington Heights, Ill. And he ain't gonna' let any WTF-bombs get into the journal either.
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