Motherfucker

Half the readership of peacefare.net, more or less, is non-American, and a large part of that does not have English as a native language. So it seems to me the furor over Rashida Tlaib requires some explication. She is the newly elected Democratic member of Congress from Michigan who called President Trump a motherfucker during a celebration of her election victory.

Motherfucker is not an obscenity that exists in the other languages I know (French, Italian and Portuguese–I never learned obscenities in German). Readers will have to inform me if I am wrong about that or if it translates to others.

I’ve lost most of my French and Portuguese obscenities–hard to remember the words if you don’t use them–but let’s take for contrast to “motherfucker” the Italian obscenity “cornuto,” which means cuckold and is just about the most offensive thing you can say to an Italian male, especially if you use the associated hand gesture. Italians also say “vaffanculo,” which is usually translated “fuck you” or “fuck off” but literally means “go do it in the ass.” They may call someone a “cazzo,” or prick. But Italians don’t in my experience call someone a motherfucker.

The word’s meaning in English depends on context. When Kanye West referred to himself as a “crazy motherfucker” in the Oval Office, the real meaning was in the “crazy” not the “motherfucker,” which was there only to attract attention to the adjective and magnify its significance:

He could just as easily have said “crazy son of a bitch.”

Tlaib used the word differently and in the more conventionally offensive sense. What she meant was that Trump is beyond her own ethical norms, in particular in bullying people:

America is a Puritan-founded society. The idea of sexual relations with your mother is pretty much the worst you can accuse someone of in that context. It is certainly much worse than “cuckold,” which is a word many Americans wouldn’t understand unless they were schooled in Shakespeare. Americans are much more likely to express disapproval of a wife who cuckolds her husband (calling her a slut, for example) than to criticize the husband.

I had a boss when I started my diplomatic career at the UN who was Hungarian, the Karl Marx professor of sociology at the University of Budapest. He called me in one day to discuss why Americans lack colorful obscenities like the Hungarian ones, which in his rendition seemed all to have to do with body parts of the Madonna. So I did what I could to convince him that “shit,” “asshole,” and “fuck you” merited consideration. He was unconvinced.

But here is my short lexicon of American obscenities, based on a childhood in Brooklyn and the New York City suburbs (English expressions can vary a good deal across the country):

1. Calling someone a “shit” implies they have done or said something offensive. It is also used as an expletive on its own, like the French “merde!” but somewhat stronger.

2. “Asshole” is close to “shit” but has the additional implication that the offense was committed intentionally and with malice aforethought.

3. “Prick” suggests a man who is habitually nasty. “Cunt” is the equivalent when referring to a woman.

4. “Son of a bitch” is someone despicable for any reason.

5. “Fuck you” is an expression used to reject as unacceptable something someone has done or said. It is almost never received well.

6. “Motherfucker” is even stronger and implies moral turpitude on the part of the person so labelled, unless used as Kanye did just to amplify the meaning of an adjective. It may also be associated with betrayal, as in “Those motherfuckers stabbed me in the back.”

I know that doesn’t complete the vocabulary, but it will be a good start for non-English speakers the next time Trump elicits an obscenity not taught in school, or uses one. But take my advice: don’t use any of these English words unless you are ready for consequences.