I’d read that comedian Pam Ann had once performed a special gig for Sir Elton John. The story was Elton had hired a 747 for Pam Ann to deliver her airline themed comedy in, all for partner David Furnish’s birthday.
As we chatted on the phone, a few years ago now, I was eager to find out how the celebrity gig came about.
‘I was playing a fucking fuck club in London…” Pam Ann began her story. By the end of her answer she’d added in a few more “fucks”, and by the end of the interview she said “cock” quite a few times too.
The interview had taken place at least three weeks before our next edition went to print. So began a long debate. Should we edit that part of Pam Ann’s answer or should we leave it as it is? Some team members thought we should we print ‘f**k’ or ‘8@!5’ in its place. The conversation went on for ages, and by the time print day rolled around we decided just to leave it as it was and brace for all the potential complaints.
Last week at RTRFM I interviewed Gareth Lilliard, the lead singer of The Drones about the band’s new single ‘Taman Shud’. The interview was for the Friday morning ‘Artbeat’ program.
The song’s a stream of conscious rant about all the things Liddiard doesn’t care about in Australian society. He shouts out that he doesn’t care about bricks and mortar, pedophiles, southern crosses, Andrew Bolt, ANZACs and pretty much most of the topics of the nightly news. At the end of the song Liddiard drops the c-bomb.
Chatting to the musician about the track, he dropped more than a few ‘fucks’ into the conversation. As we discussed left and right wing politics he shared the following;
“Why are [the left] always these little goody two shoes who have to dot your fucking i’s and cross your t’s, you know what I mean? Why don’t the left ever just go being a bigot is fucked. You’re a fucking cunt. Why aren’t we allowed to do that!” Lilliard said.
The interview was pre-recorded, we had some choices here. We could edit out the part of the interview where Liddiard swore the most, we could bleep out the offending words, or we could play it was, providing a language warning in advance. We decided to leave Mr Liddiard as he came, and deal with any concerned listeners.
I imagine a similar conversation occurred at the ABC prior to the airing of last night’s edition of Four Corners where Fair Work Commissioner Michael Lawler used the phrase “cunt-struck”.
Speaking about how his relationship with union leader Kathy Jackson would be perceived, Lawler shared that he was worried he’d be seen as a man entranced by a woman.
Earlier this year, in a civil case, Jackson was found to have to have used her position as the head of a union to gain financial advantage.
“I’ll be characterised as that scumbag, crook, fraudster, and, at the very best, somebody who’s been bewitched by an evil harridan, namely Kathy,” Lawler told ABC journalist Caro Meldrum-Hanna, “That I’m cunt-struck and that I have been utterly taken in by somebody who’s a serious crook.”
“Heavens to Betsy” proclaimed one Twitter user, while other’s struggled to believe what they’d just heard. Buzzfeed’s Rob Stott proclaimed it word of the day, and a campaign to get the word up on the Q&A feed was launched. Author Marieke Hardy suggested it might be the beginning of the apocalypse.
There was a surge in the hashtag #cuntstruck and there was sudden rush of people searching the phrase on Google.
The ABC has defended the inclusion of the utterance, agreeing it was on the upper register of offensive words, but they believed it fell within the audience’s expectations. Many however feel that the ABC should have omitted the phrase.
As an editor every time this question arises, there is a discussion about whether we should report exactly what somebody said, or should we skirt around it. Is our job to censor what people say? Are we the guardians of good language? Were you psychologically damaged by the thirteen profanities in this article? Did we vitiate this article by using them?
Each time we have this debate, I come to the same conclusion, let’s just report what people say. If you’ve got a problem with the language – take it up with the person whose mouth it came out of.
For the record – complaints to OUTinPerth about our use of the word ‘queer’ substantially out number those about any other word. And yes, it is members of the LGBTIQ+ communities who object to it’s use.
Graeme Watson, image: YayMicro | AlistairCotton
