In an unscientific experiment, the Washington Times uses google search, picks 10 liberal and 10 conservative websites, throws in George Carlin's "seven dirty words" and publishes the results.
The paper took the time to use google search, picked 10 popular liberal websites and an equal number of popular conservative websites, only using those where comments are allowed, searched for the use of the famous "seven dirty words" you cannot say on television, from the George Carlin skit and published their findings.
They found that liberals have a tendency to cuss more. 12 times as much according to their unscientific findings.
Searching for Mr. Carlin's seven words and some popular variants at the top 10 conservative Web communities yields about 70,000 results. That is dwarfed in comparison to the 1.9 million instances of profanity on liberal sites.
They used Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Democratic Underground, Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, Think Progress, Atrios, Greenwald, MyDD and Firedoglake, as the liberal examples.
They used Free Republic, Hot Air, Little Green Footballs, Townhall, NewsBusters, Lucianne.com, Wizbang, Ace of Spades, Red State and Volokh Conspiracy as the conservative examples.
Their finds concluded that the liberal sites had a profanity quotient of 14.6 and the conservative sites had a profanity quotient of 1.17.
The question some will ask is why the need to use profanity as almost every other word and FireDogLake answered that question for themselves back in May when the issue arose.
That isn't the question that came to my mind though after reading the the Washington Times piece, my question was, so what?
Some people cuss more than others, some people feel the need to use profanity to make their points. Some people just use it to catch the attention of the readers.
It isn't illegal and does it really matter whether liberals cuss more online than conservatives?
To some people the answer would be yes and they are entitled to their opinions and those might be the people that simply wouldn't care to visit the sites where every other word is profane and that too is their right.
Others do not care one way or another whether conservatives curse less than liberals online.
What the report did do though was peak my interest into what readers think, so I leave you with four questions.
1. As a reader, would you avoid sites that use the F-word in every other sentence or paragraph (like the FireDogLake piece linked above) or does it not really matter to the content of the article itself?
2. Do you find the use of profanity enhances the flavor, for lack of a better word, of an article or do you feel it takes away from the topic being discussed?
3. Do you think badly of someone that cannot make their point without the use of profanity or does it not matter one way or another?
4. Last but not least, does the use or lack thereof, of profanity, separate liberals from conservatives in any meaningful manner?
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