Listening to the BBC via Colorado Public Radio tonight, I heard an interview with the author of
The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.
I've known for a long time that the BBC is a dependable source of proper English, polite but persistent interviewers, quality investigative reporting, and cricket scores like "one hundred and eighty-seven not out." But I never expected to hear the word "asshole" several times in five minutes on the Beeb.
It's not one of the
Carlin seven, but anybody who used the word on national TV in the U.S. would be in hot water. I credit Sutton with the cleverness of using "asshole" in the title of the book, thereby creating a context in which it can be used non-obscenely. They can't very well censor the title of the book; nobody would know what they were talking about.
I suppose it's similar to
encoding illegal programs as prime numbers which can be legally discussed on the Internet.