The 6th Annual Tucker Awards for Excellence in Swearing

Oh, 2020, you’re finally over. And that can mean only one thing: it’s time to award the annual Strong Language honors for excellence in swearing. This is the sixth year that we’ve bestowed the highly prestigious Tucker Awards. (You can take a walk down memory lane by checking out our previous roundups, from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.) Regular readers will know that the awards are named in honor of the patron saint of Strong Language, Malcolm Tucker, the super-sweary political spin doctor played by Peter Capaldi in the BBC series The Thick of It and the film In the Loop.

Even though series creator Armando Iannucci continues to maintain that The Thick of It won’t be making a comeback, Tucker’s spirit was alive and well in 2020. In fact, a clip from the show, with Tucker declaring “a fucking lockdown” in the office, was used as a public-service announcement by the BBC back in March soon after the U.K. government announced the first stay-at-home order of the pandemic.

The BBC is now running this as a public information film between some of its programmes. pic.twitter.com/L92EuU17nk

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) March 26, 2020

We can only imagine how Tucker would have handled this fucking omnishambles of a year. Let’s get this shitshow on the road.

“History of Swear Words” on Netflix

We’re pleased AF to let you know that “History of Swear Words,” will launch on Netflix January 5, 2021. The series—six 20-minute episodes—will consider the etymologies, false etymologies, and usage of six classic swears:  fuck, shit, dick, bitch, pussy, and damn.

We’re especially pleased that one of our Strong Language co-fuckers, lexicographer Kory Stamper, was one of the consultants for the show. The other experts include cognitive scientist and author of What the F Benjamin Bergen; linguist Anne Charity Hudley; professor of feminist studies Mireille Miller-Young; film critic Elvis Mitchell; and author of Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing Melissa Mohr.

Nicolas Cage will host.

More details here. And let’s hope for a second season so we can delve into asshole, cunt, cocksucker, and other sweary faves.

Martha Gellhorn and all-American-lady-swearing

Sentimentally, we like to think that ladies of an earlier time — mostly our grandmothers and great-grandmothers — lived virtuous lives, without swearing. When Joseph Mitchell profiled A. S. Colborne, who spent much of his life trying to exterminate profanity, for The New Yorker in 1941, he captured the paradoxical view of women’s swearing, partly as a function of class, at that time. When Mitchell visited one day, Colborne explained, “I’m sort of sleepy … Sat up late last night studying over bar and grill profanity. Why, the women are worse than the men. And you can’t talk to them! Why, they’ll spit in your eye!” But then, he remembered that when he first started admonishing swearers on the street, he would insist, “‘Your dear old mother never taught you to talk like that. Think it over!” But maybe some mothers did, and some classy women of the mid-twentieth century apparently swore a lot, whatever our mythology.

I was reminded of this while reading Janet Somerville’s new selection of Martha Gellhorn’s letters, Yours, for probably always (Firefly Books, 2019) and then Caroline Morehead’s Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life (Henry Holt and Company, 2003). Gellhorn is a remarkable writer, perhaps most famous for her war reporting. The final edition of The Face of War (1988), collects dispatches from the Spanish Civil War, the wars in Finland and China, Word War II, wars in Java and Vietnam, the Six Day War, and Central American wars. She wrote fiction, too, perhaps most importantly The Trouble I’ve Seen (1936), four stories about the Great Depression. To my mind, Gellhorn is one of the best American writers of the twentieth century.

That Canadian fucker Alex Trebek: What is a salty dog?

Louis Menand recently reminisced at length in The New Yorker (23 November 2020) about the late Alex Trebek, longtime host of the television quiz show Jeopardy!, with this aside: “By his own account, offered in his brief and cheery memoir, The Answer Is[…] Reflections on My Life (Simon & Schuster, [2020]), and confirmed by other reports, including McNear’s [Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive Guide to Jeopardy! and Its History (Grand Central, 2020)], when Trebek was off the air he was more laid-back and salty, less like your eighth-grade math teacher.” And that sounds about right. I’m pretty sure Mr. Fuller didn’t swear, though my eighth-grade algebra class gave him plenty of reason to do so — there’s plenty of swearing at algebra, even among eighth graders, but no swearing in it, and Mr. Fuller’s life was a veritable story problem.

I don’t do social media, and here’s why: just the other day, I watched my first TikTok. It rocked my world. Miami news anchor Frances Wang (@franceswangtv) posted a montage of Alex Trebek swearing like a salty seadog fishing herring in the Bay of Fundy. My wife thought I needed to see it, damn the psychological consequences.

Sweary holiday gifts

Yes, 2020 has been a shitshow, but at Strong Language we still observe the niceties—or the naughtyties—of ritual and tradition. Here are gifts that evoke the spirit of the season and the whole fucking year.

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