Blue Streak:: Swearing, Free Speech, and Sexual Harrassment - Hardcover

Dooling, Richard

3.67

12 ratings by Goodreads

9780679444718: Blue Streak:: Swearing, Free Speech, and Sexual Harrassment

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679444718 ISBN 13: 9780679444718

Publisher: Random House, 1996

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A funny, provocative, and knowledgeable book about cursing and swearing, Blue Streak includes chapters on political correctness and on foul-ups in the workplace and in the courts caused by language regulations. It explores the tendency of men to swear more than women, the history and implications of some of the more common swear words, and obscenity in social, personal, and even theological conversation and literature.

In this volume you will find a fascinating and hilarious explanation of what "f--- you" actually means. (It turns out to be a strange little piece of syntax.) You will tour Hell as a piece of real estate. And you will learn why God would probably rather have us swear than not. The writing is playful and sophisticated, and it takes Blue Streak far beyond mere naughtiness and into the realm of literature.

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About the Author:

Richard Dooling was recently nominated for the National Book Award for his second novel, White Man's Grave. A lawyer specializing in employment-discrimination cases, he lives in Omaha with his wife and three children.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A passionate defense of offensive language by a man who thinks that American society suffers from an excess of politeness. Dooling is both an acclaimed novelist (White Man's Grave, 1994) and an employment discrimination lawyer. He believes that traditional injunctions against the use of swear words are foolish and that our era has made matters worse by imposing similar taboos, not only social but legal, on the use of sexual and racial epithets. Blue Streak is mostly a series of derivative and often puerile reflections on cussing, but the book's core is a critique of laws that seek to ban sexist and racist speech in the workplace, regulations that have led to many spurious claims against businesses and some large punitive awards based on speech that the First Amendment is ostensibly held to protect. So much stupidity has been committed or indulged by government and the courts in the name of eradicating unpleasant behavior on the job that Dooling has no trouble finding targets. He demolishes the hypocrisy of positing that women and men should be treated exactly the same in the workplace, except that women are too delicate to be exposed to foul language. Even shooting fish in a barrel, however, requires a steadier hand than Dooling employs here. He pooh-poohs the idea that abusive language and photographs of naked women can be part of prolonged, deliberate behavior meant to intimidate female employees. He is eloquent about the tendency among campus hate-speech monitors and others to demonize their opponents, but he portrays feminists as single-minded harridans who want to turn men into women. Dooling brings some erudition and occasional wit to his subject, but as a polemicist, he's his own worst enemy. A book Rush Limbaugh might have written if he had a richer vocabulary. -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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