On Shit

Or, how to get you to pay attention to the Trump judiciary's evisceration of the National Labor Relations Board.

The Lloyd’s Bank coprolite, believed to be the largest ancient you-know-what ever found, was, uh, created by a Viking in the 9th century and is on view at the Jorvik Viking Center in York, England.

I’ve observed more than once (quoting the great New Rochellian Thomas Paine) that these are the times that try men’s souls. That’s my excuse for doing something this week that I never did before. I put two scatalogical obscenities into a lede. I don’t recall previously starting anything I wrote with even one. The naughty words are “shit” and “asshole.” In my defense, these appear inside quotation marks, and anyway contemporary society is well along toward shedding their forbidden status, much as it did with the words “bloody” and “pregnant” during the previous century. (The reason there used to be so many elaborate circumlocutions to describe the state of pregnancy, e.g., “gravid,” “infanticipating,” “getting storked,” etc., half of these coined by Walter Winchell, is that “pregnant,” believe it or not, used to be a word you weren’t allowed to say in polite company.) 

In the case of “shit,” I believe mainstream acceptance can’t come soon enough. That’s because lately the preferred term has been the infantilizing “poop,” against which I am waging a one-person campaign. “Poop” is acceptable only when used, fondly, to describe the only accomplishment of which a newborn baby is capable. Otherwise, please use “excrement” or “feces” or “ordure” or “turd” or any one of many other readily available terms, this item having been with us for several millennia (see illustration, above) without anybody feeling the need to wrap a pretty pink bow around it.

If you’ve read this far I hope you’ll read a little further and click through to my latest New Republic piece, which is not about loaf-pinching but rather about the National Labor Relations Board and how various Trump-appointed judges are trying to kill it. You can read it here.