Curse of the curse words

Washington Post reporter Robert Barnes started off his story previewing the Brandi Levy Supreme Court case with this lead:

The high school cheerleader relegated to the JV squad for another year responded with a fleeting fit of frustration: a photo of her upraised middle finger and another word that begins with F.

“F—- school, f—- softball, f—- cheer, f—- everything,” 14-year-old Brandi Levy typed into Snapchat one spring Saturday. Like all “snaps” posted to a Snapchat “story,” this one sent to about 250 “friends” was to disappear within 24 hours, before everyone returned to Pennsylvania’s Mahoney Area High School on Monday.

Public writing, and formal persuasive writing in particular, tends to avoid using vulgarities (George Carlin's famous Seven Words) but there are times when those very words become part of the discussion. The above is the lead to a news story, not an argument per se, but the writer managed to make the situation clear while adding a bit of lightness to what might turn out to be an extremely important case for student free expression rights.

What might catch your eye (and ear, should you take a moment to read the first sentence aloud) is the alliteration of "fleeting fit of frustration," which sets readers up for a more earthy fourth F-word. 

A serious debate can be had about whether not simply writing the full word is silly or insulting or simply unnecessary, but it's difficult to imagine any reader of the Post not being able to fill in the blanks. 

So the choice to opt for something slightly less vulgar is a compromise. I certainly would not recommend obscuring the offending word to the point that readers are left to imagine what was so terrible. For instance, "Brandi Levy hurriedly typed a vulgar Snapchat message into her phone..." 

From the august position of seasoned adult, this entire situation might seem both amusing and quintessentially high school behavior. But the school certainly didn't think it was inconsequential and, as I mentioned yesterday, the school imposed a one-year punishment on Brandi. You might blithely shrug off the idea of not being allowed to cheer for a school team for a year -- let's face it: most people seem to enjoy mocking cheerleaders -- and might even think the school had done her a favor.

But imagine the implications of living in a society where a government institution exerts power over not only on-campus student behavior and speech but over speech and behavior in the home or on the street. 

But beyond the serious questions this case brings us, the introduction to the story is a model of being factual, with a side of fun with language, and setting the scene for readers who want to know how this all began.

Beyond smart diction and syntax points, this story should remind us of a constant struggle between those with power and those without much (and who could have less power than students?) to control expression.

We will learn what the court says this summer.