Getting angry about words…

But first…
Dulltown, UK: Today’s quotation if from Flann O’Brien’s 1930s novel The Third Policeman:
‘I have no name,’ I replied.
‘Then how could I tell you where the box was if you could not sign a receipt? That would be most irregular, I might as well give it to the west wind or to the smoke from a pipe. How could you execute an important Bank document?’
‘I can always get a name,’ I replied, ‘Doyle or Spaldman is a good name and so is O’Sweeny and Hardiman and O’Gara. I can take my choice, I am not tied down for life to one word like most people.’
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I shouldn’t really find it annoying, but I’m afraid I do.
As I potter about in my little workshop creating a seemingly endless series of lino prints, and doing other arty things, I generally have the radio switched on – it is usually tuned to BBC programmes.
A couple of days ago as I was happily slicing out some little triangular fragments from a lino block (they would eventually be ‘stars’ in a black sky) there was BBC World Service science programme playing. The subject being discussed was something about the environment and how we silly humans are making such a mess of everything.
The subject of ‘waste matter’ came up.
Now, the people on this show were of course scientists, they were chatting to a BBC science journalist – and they were, of course, all adults.
What I noticed was that when they were talking about human and animal waste products and how to manage them, products which are regularly referred to as, oh: excrement, excreta, dung, detritus, faeces, and such like, these people were using the word, wait for it… ‘Poo’.
Yes, ‘Poo’.
I paused in my lino slicing, looked up and stared at the radio for a moment.
‘Poo’, is the word parents suggest to small children when the little ones are struggling, their mouths open, to find a word to describe the object they are pointing at, their eyes wide, newly arrived on the nicely cut lawn, that next door’s dog has just contributed to the afternoon’s entertainment.
When the people on the radio spoke this word, one could detect a slight edginess in their voices, either embarrassment from uttering this childish thing, or embarrassment from talking about this unpleasant and stinky subject on the radio at all. Who knows?
Maybe the producer of the show had a chat with everyone before the broadcast and suggested that people listening all over the world might be upset by folks bandying the terms: excrement, excreta, dung, detritus, and faeces about, and they would straightway switch off their radios, never to return.
I carried on with my intricate chiselling, but under my breath I was muttering things like, ‘Come on BBC! How about the word ‘shit’? It’s a very good word, is shit! It’s be around for hundreds of years you know!* People regularly say it on TV and in films nowadays, that word wouldn’t upset me at all. What upsets me are supposedly intelligent adults using cute childish language, just in case, they offend anyone?…
Hey BBC, do try to get your shit together!…

* I looked it up:
Shit: of Indo-European ancestry, used as verb from the 1400s and a century later as a noun.