Among the Jewish traits I am most proud to be historically and culturally associated with is the way my people obstreperously defend our principles even when doing so goes against our best interests. I love the loudmouths and the unreasonably argumentative. I love people who are willing to go to great hyperbolic length to get a laugh or to irritate their opponents. I love the ranters and the hysterics, those who never know when enough is enough. Whether I agree with what they’re saying or not, I always appreciate their compulsion to take things too far. I see it as my birthright to get under people’s skin and annoy them until they want to scream. And one of the greatest rhetorical tools people bent toward this sort of behavior can wield is the well-timed, carefully aimed obscenity.
For this reason, I was excited to hear about “Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture,” Josh Lambert’s recently published book on the subject.
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