Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Pittsburgh's very own Ruth Ann Dailey, conservative twit, on vulgarity, and the justification thereof. Read the whole article, it's especially interesting to see how she justifies Cheney's behavior to Leahy.
SNIP
The f-word is a much stronger vulgarity that several famous men have uttered recently -- to widely varying levels of consternation. When Vice President Dick Cheney used the term in some advice he gave Sen. Patrick Leahy last summer on the Senate floor, the furor dredged up other politicians' transgressions. Both John Kerry (Rolling Stone, 2003) and George W. Bush (Talk, 1999) have used the word in leisurely interviews. Magazines aren't private venues; both men aspire to be social leaders; and neither was engaged in heated conflict at the time, so both earn an "egregious" rating on my Offense-O-Meter.
And Dick Cheney's transgression? He defended his anatomically impossible suggestion as "badly needed" and "long overdue." Leahy had lit into him earlier that week, but I think Leahy's deserved a tongue-lashing at least since the mid-1980s.
That's when he castigated Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork for doing legal consulting on the side while teaching law at Yale University. Bork had taken the extra, perfectly respectable work to pay medical bills while his wife was dying of cancer. When Leahy made his unbelievably mean-spirited accusation, Bork lowered his head and covered his eyes.
Like emotional displays from unemotional people, you have to weigh the vulgarities of the normally polite.
Cheney's utterance last year was private and face-to-face with his accuser. Being Irish and knowing how to carry a grudge, I only hope that, in Cheney's shoes, I would have expressed my thoughts just as succinctly. Offense-O-Meter rating? "Justifiable use of verb." SNIP
I added the emphasis.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05143/508817.stm
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