It's been about 40 years since George Carlin first performed his "Seven Words" comedy bit. He recorded it for an album released in 1972.

The seven words were shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Carlin admitted that he was asked to remove motherfucker from the list, because it was redundant, fuck being already on the list. He claimed that the cadence of the bit didn't work without it. Carlin, for his own part, wanted to see tits off the list, because it sounds like a snack. Nabisco Tits. Corn tits. Cheese tits. Tater tits.

We have our own objection to tits - and that it, that it's spelled wrong. That's the proper pronunciation of the word teats. And every dairy farmer deals with teats a couple of times a day. Keeping teats healthy is a particular problem he deals with. (While we're at it, we'd like to remind everyone that the word everybody knows as vittles is spelled victuals. Jes' saying.)

It's funny to watch the glee people experience when on the Craig Ferguson show, at being free to express themselves, because Craig makes greater use of the seven words than anyone else on the air. It's integral to his schtick, at this point. He says that CBS doesn't know his show even exists, which is an interesting notion, since Les Moonves runs CBS. His wife, Julie Chen, has appeared on Craig Ferguson's show.

Larry King Was On

Larry King was on, a couple of nights ago. He said he called up the network to find out when the show tapes, and he said they didn't seem to know that Craig Ferguson even had a show on CBS. A lot of really harsh jokes about King's age and his marriages and divorces have been heard on Ferguson's show (as they have been on every other talk show) and yet King didn't seem to be in the slightest bit put out by them, which I thought was quite big of King. I've never been a big fan of King, and I'm still not, but he stands higher in my estimation after that show.

In many ways, Ferguson's show carries on the tradition of George Carlin and Lennie Bruce. @CraigyFerg reads e-mails and tweets each night, responding to each with a one-line - or less - response. He is more likely to go into a long discussion of the town the correspondent is from than the content of his message. "Ah, he's from Maryland. I like Maryland. I got crabs there once."

Carrie Fisher, appearing on the show in December, presented Craig with a kangaroo scrotum she'd found in a gift shop while touring Australia. Craig kept them around for quite a while, but they just didn't shock his guests - so he asked one of his guests, Wendy Booker, a young lady headed for the North Pole, to take them to the North Pole for him. They may end up the most-travelled kangaroo testicles of all time.

The Word Ferguson Won't Touch

One thing that Ferguson hasn't yet broached yet, as far as I can tell, is the word cunt. Nobody seems willing to approach that word, although the other six words all seem to be fairly commonplace in a variety of settings.

What's wrong with cunt, anyway? In 1785, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue defined cunt as "a nasty name for a nasty thing". When Robin Williams was on Actor's Studio, he said that his least favorite word was cunt, because it was so harsh, and yet pussy was his favorite, as it was so warm and friendly.

Semantically, cunt is pretty much the same thing as dick or prick. It refers to a sexual organ, and it's sometimes used as an insult. There's really no other word that replaces it. Vagina means only the interior organ, the sheath, and labia means only the exterior organ (or, in speeches by our President, a country we're bombing in Northern Africa.) There are some terms used in pornography, such as "snatch" that are demeaning, but cunt pretty much is just biological.

Although it's threatening. Hugh Hefner wrote, more than 50 years ago, that each of us was responsible for our own sexual pleasure, because nobody else really understood what the itch was that we were scratching. He proclaimed, as did Helen Gurley Brown and others, that good girls do (and great girls do often) and it was perfectly normal for women to enjoy sex.

A Transitive Verb

But men, in general, still treat sex as a verb transitive, that sexual intercourse is something a man does to a woman, rather than that sex is play that both engage in together. The thought that women have a cunt, and that women might fuck men, deliberately, objectifying them, treating them as sex objects, is pretty scarey to many men.

In a week when the President is talking about attacking labia, and the news media are discussing turd sandwiches, I thought it was appropriate to point out that of the seven words you can't say on television, you can now say six on television.

And if it's necessary for feminist after feminist to fuck me, in order to liberate that one last remaining unspeakable word, well, I suppose it is necessary for each of us to stand in harm's way, for the benefit of mankind. Fire when ready, Gridley!

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Actor's Studio - Carrie Fisher - crabs - Craig Ferguson - dictionary - George Carlin - Julie Chen - kangaroo scrotum - labia - Larry King - Lenny Bruce - Les Moonves - Libya - Maryland - Robin Williams - tater tits - turd sandwich