The Hook

Is that f---in’ redneck, f****in’ redneck, or just plain fucking redneck?

One minute Levi Johnston is a strapping Alaskan teen self-describing on a personal web page and, shazam, he has reporters and editors around the world scratching their heads: man oh man, what to do with the F-word?

The teen, of course, is the ‘fessed up squire of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin’s daughter’s baby. You can feel for the guy. Some clandestine teenage sex, failed birth control, and the international media spotlight blinds him. With teenage bravado, the 18-year-old dad had written on a personal webpage that he didn’t want kids, and called himself a “fuckin’ redneck”. Johnston’s news value is clear; the use of the F word less so.

Fuck flummoxes. The Canadian Press style guide warns that “obscenity is not wanted in the news report.” There are exceptions to the rule: a prominent figure using it, or “if a quote using vulgarity is the most effect way to connote certain emotions.” Levi, we get you. We think.

The guide’s advice? “Write CAUTION: Note language (fuck) in para 3.” (This in case some unsuspecting broadcaster “rips and reads”.)

(This in case some unsuspecting broadcaster “rips and reads”.)

CP also warns against using what it calls “the prissy device of replacing some letters of the offensive words with hyphens.” It’s fuck or nothing, it seems.

Some publications went prissy, others commando. The Globe and Mail’s Judith Timson ran with the whole quote (last year film critic Matthew Hays criticized the Globe for deleting all the fucks in his column, so things must have changed over there), while the Calgary Herald used stars to blot out the offending word. Others found solace in prissiness.

CBS News online: On his MySpace page, Johnston proudly declares: 'I'm a f---in' redneck.'

The Times/London: He describes himself on his MySpace page as a 'f****** red-neck'. He says that he has a girlfriend but 'I don’t want kids.'

Irish Independent: He is the self-styled 'f****** redneck' who declares in his Facebook entry that he does not want to have children.

The F-word is suitably strong, it can make the writer seem courageous, cool, and even kind of catchy. When I let it slip during a college course I taught last term, the word was open game, and bantering around freely by students after that. (Yikes, don't report me to the department chairman.) But as a journalist, the F-word (see I’m growing uncomfortable) should stay in quotes.

The F-word is a cheap way to get a response. Think of comedians who swear their way through an act, as a surrogate for truly being funny. As a mother, I squirm when a magazine arrives with the title “Young People Fucking”, and banish it to recyling.

So, where does that foul-typing Levi Johnston leave us? An insight to teen vernacular, maybe. But this is what I believe: that Sarah Palin did not tell John McCain about her daughter’s pregnancy, or Johnston might have been “vetted” and advised to yank his page from public view before the world latched on to it.

Or even more tragically, if McCain’s handlers did know, they failed to “vet” Levi Johnston. They failed to understand modern communication, advise him to pull his page down, and give the teen the protection he so well deserved, but could not give himself.