A Cheerleader's Vulgar Message Prompts a First Amendment Showdown

[Moostache]

16. Speech is free. Consequences are paid in full. Over-reactions are ridiculous.

A teenager said "fuck"? Four whole times? Are these hypocritical puritans serious?
Ever listen to a currently popular record? Know what "WAP" is?

Coarsening discourse? FUCK THAT...profanity is merely a blunt instrument of communication, but MORE communication is the key, not LESS and NEVER CENSORED.

Any situation - including racial ones - can be improved if and only if the words are de-powered and the ideas producing them are examined and debated in the open.

I have heard my kids playing video games with their friends online...every other word is fuck, shit, cock or cunt. In their context, these are shorthand used to express frustration or to convey disrespect towards something happening in virtual reality but in THE REAL WORLD, these kind of things are not appropriate...so are the WORDS the problem, or is it the display of inherent disrespect that bothers people more?

Teenagers make hideously stupid decisions hourly (I have 4 of them in my house right now and I guarantee you that in the 5 minutes since I started this reply, there have been a minimum of 8 bad decisions made, bordering on heinously stupid)...but censoring speech or punishing without examination and understanding of the reasons for such outbursts solves exactly ass-lint nothing.

NEVER allow words to sway you, instead seek to understand the motives and intentions of the words to gain knowledge than may be applied to become influence to then produce the desired change in vocabulary and teenage angst.