29 Comments

“I don’t care enough about the prestige to chase it”

Im fairly certain the readers of The Banter view you with high regard. I know I do, not least because prestige publishing seems far less important to you than what you write here.

I know I certainly look forward to the latest entries here (by any of the Banter contributors) than anything I’d read at the Times or similar outlets.

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author

Very much appreciated Christopher!

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I feel the same. It’s the content that’s important not the verbiage. Look at tRump, he can rant for hours saying the worst things and not one “cuss”word.

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“I’m going to put children in cages and my political enemies jail. For America.”

“Well fuck that, asswipe. I’m going to fight you tooth and nail every fucking step of the way you shit-spewing asshole.”

A some actually think it’s the second speaker we should find objectionable.

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I know right? Don’t look over there look over here. Sharks fighting monkeys etc...

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We all must do that and obliterate this fascist once and for all until he’s a greasy smear on the ground

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They're just fucking words. They have precisely the fucking meaning we choose to fucking give them. If that fucking upsets you, find a fucking gardening blog. You are, of course, free to be fucking upset over Ben's fucking cursing, but it's his fucking show. And I for one, happen to fucking enjoy it. Have a nice fucking day, eh? 😀 🤣

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author

Well fucking said.

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It's subtle, but I see what you did there.

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Thanks for picking up on that. I was worried it would be too subtle. :-)

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Actually, it’s been traced back to the 1400s, so not a Puritan invention.

And how does “For Unlawful Fornication” beget F.U.C.K as its acronym instead of F.U.F. anyway?

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I worded it wrong. It’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

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Nov 20, 2023Liked by Ben Cohen

My partners and I have been working our asses of since 2021 to start an independent media brand that covers the politics from the perspective of "people on the ground" in the midwest. (You can find "The Heartland POD" anywhere you find a podcasts.) We started in because we all got pretty fed up with the "We flew into (insert name of midwestern place) over the weekend and boy oh boy what these "real" Americans had to say will SHOCK you" kind of coverage of our region. Anyway, we're now onto the next phase of building the subscription era of our business. I've been a writer for a very long time and the question of "legitimacy" always comes up when absolutely nothing I've written belongs in the leagues of an NYT and so on. (That isn't to say that I'm not skilled; I'm just not famously skilled, so to speak.) To say that "writing for prestige" made me feel more seen and validated as anything I can think of right now is a massive understatement. I don't really know how to express my gratitude, but to say the simple words of "thank you." I mean them deeply.

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author

Fantastic! Wishing you and The Heartland lots of success!

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Just a random question, maybe as a journalism veteran, you have some insight:

Why is the New York Times treated like this precious Fabrege egg that must be worshipped and obeyed 24/7? When did the groupthink start? I thought writers and editors were supposed to chase leads and write stories independently of each other. I often hear about Paper B “taking the lead” of the Times re: how to cover a particular topic. If I were an editor at Paper B and a writer commented about how “The Times” was covering something, I would at minimum, suspend him/her for a week.

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I used to get the Times breaking news every day for a fee, then I discovered the AP, it’s free and no opinions-only reliable news headlines, breaking news and other without the flourish, and I decide what I want to read further into. I stopped the NYTs completely as it doesn’t report anything that the AP hasn’t covered.

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How about intercoursing Monday's??

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author

That might be a little much, even for us...

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Sorry, but that’s a linguistic fallacy.

I fucking love fucking using the fucking fuck-word in my fucking writing and fucking conversation.

As an English teacher of senior Brit Lit students, I had to disabuse my kids of this notion every year. It was always a fun conversation. Lol.

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author

hahaha!!

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I’ll bet

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Thank you Layla, I welcome any learning experience and I now know what a “linguistic fallacy” is but I’ll probably forget that and just call it a fable, myth, etc...

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I also had the myth wrong and there’s more than one. For unlawful Carnal Knowledge. And Fornication Under Consent of the King.

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I even got the fake acronym wrong. It’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

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Forgive my ignorance and for hearing it so long ago, it sounded right. As I looked it up now there really is no certainty of how it came about or when it was first used as it was something no one wanted to use in their writings.

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I’ve found so many different possibilities of where and how the F word originated I’m left with no explanation. It was written though in one article that the word was to taboo to be written or included in any dictionary before 1969 and I also found the following:

The earliest known appearance of the word in its current spelling it 1533 in Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits by Sir David Lyndesay who wrote: “Bischops … may fuck thair fill and be vnmaryit”

Forgive my mistakes in grammar, I’m not a writer.

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Another myth I found: Fornication Under Consent of the King (F.U.C.K.)

🤣

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So the acronym is a myth? My husband told me that a while back and it sounded like a viable explanation on the now universal four letter F word that I didn’t question or look it up as I would now. Should’ve known better. I hate that I passed on a false account.

So how did the F word come about?

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🤣🤣🤣 “Leave It To Beaver” was canceled a long time ago.

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