[mykwyner]

Please explain how words can be "good" or "bad." Words are air molecules vibrating, drops of ink on paper, hand gestures, or electrons bouncing off a screen. They can have no intrinsic goodness or evil. I think that the belief in things like magic incantations is the exclusive realm of the uneducated and superstitious.

I could write every profanity I could think of (and that's a lot!) in this space and neither I nor anyone else would be harmed by it. Why is it that the word fuck is proof of low class when it is used by a kid in the slums of Manila or Brooklyn, but when it is used by writers like Alan Ginsburg or J.D. Salinger it becomes an essential element of great literature?