In the comments to the previous post regarding the juvenile incivility and playground level exchanges of insults in the House of Representatives last week, Chris Marschner notes in part,
“Today, our representatives are products of our public education system where the original classics have been banned for being offensive to one group or discarded as irrelevant to current society. Linguistic presentations today reflect the gutter because that is how the teachers they had speak.’
Last night, before Chris issued his comment, I had already resolved to write about the following revolting development:
In a new episode of “Blue Bloods,” the long-running CBS police and family drama that Ethics Alarms awarded “Ethical TV Show of the Year” several times back when I was doing such things, the show concluded with Erin ( Bridget Moynihan), the NYC prosecutor and police commissioner Tom Selleck’s daughter, making an erection joke. At Sunday dinner. And not even an original or particular funny one.
The discussion around the dinner table of this devout Catholic extended family—where grandpa constantly reminds the brood to “keep it civil”—involved the fifth wedding anniversary of youngest son Jamie (Well Estes) and his policewoman wife. The group noted that traditionally this was the “Wooden” anniversary. Erin then asked, “So, Jamie, are you up to giving her wood?”and punctuated her witticism with a suggestive upward arm thrust.
Hearty laughter all around.
I look forward to next season, when Sunday dinner is disrupted by Grandpa (Len Cariou) loudly farting during dessert.
How can anyone still argue, as I have many times, that Donald Trump is too crude to be President?
Ethics Alarms 
Kinda makes one fond of what I’ll just call the Wilbur Mills era.
Scantily clad and in the Wading Pool?
Actually, it’s the Reflecting Pool, isn’t it. Pressed into service as something else.
You know this, of course, but jokes akin to this one appear in places like Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth. I’m told that playwright is considered pretty culturally significant, and that he pre-dated the 21st century.
There’s one Canterbury Tale that revolves around a fart joke: https://sites.nd.edu/manuscript-studies/2018/12/19/undergrad-wednesdays-fart-jokes-the-summoners-tale-and-the-timelessness-of-crass-humor/ , and at least one other, The Miller’s Tale, that includes one. ( Had to look these up, although I remembered one existed.) I believe there are others that include various crude humor.
Do I even bother pointing out that standards of decorum and speech were significantly different in the streets of Elizabethan England than in the U.S. today, when they threw piss and excrement out the windows and open prostitution was feature of daily life? Nah. You know all that.