fgazette.com Community news site for Union Parish Louisiana
It would seem that the use uncouth swear words have become a way of description throughout the Bayou State, as well as across the country, from the President on down in recent years. The routine use of words that are both course and foul-mouthed are being used more and more across the athletic, business, political and academic spectrum. My opinion? I personally feel the growing use of vulgar language is right down disgusting.
The language controversy raised its ugly head in the past few weeks as an LSU professor chose to criticize both Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and President Trump during a lecture in his classroom where he teaches as a tenured professor. The law professor argues that he can gush about anything he wants using any filthy language he feels he can spew out under his protection of freedom of speech and academic freedom.
Granted, this professor, a guy named Ken Levy, can go into his empty classroom and say about anything he wants. The simple test? I’ll stay out of your face but you stay out of mine. But the rules rightly change when you are teaching young students, and a portion of the professor’s salary is paid for with public funds.
The bar has been set by Louisiana’s flagship university by determining that dissenting views are allowed in an academic setting, but disagreements can take place without using vulgarity or showing disrespect. Professor Levy crossed that line. As expected, the courts are now involved. Levy has been suspended from teaching at LSU, and he is appealing his dismissal. A question you might ask yourself. Would you want your daughter to be sitting in the classroom as the teacher laces his or her lectures with swearwords? I would not.
“The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it,” President George Washington once wrote. It’s a good thing our nation’s first president did not take a law course under Prof. Levy.
Vulgarity was the cause of a shake up recently when the Vice chairman of the Louisiana Public Service Commission, Davante Lewis, was removed from his post over his use of coarse language directed at Governor Jeff Landry. He was not fired like professor Levy. But fellow commissioners removed him from his vice chairmanship. Is this a violation of Lewis’s freedom of speech? No. Lewis has the right to say whatever he wants. But when you’re a public official, there are consequences. The rules of the commission say that a majority of the commission can either elect or remove those in leadership roles. Lewis could not put the majority of votes together to keep him as commission vice president. So he can live by the sword or die by the sword. If he continues to criticize by using vulgar language, he will do so out of any leadership role.
College football coaches are rampant in their use of swear words. My two young grandsons and I watched the post-game press conference of the Alabama football coach after their humiliating defeat to Vanderbilt this past season, and after listening to his rants and alibis for a while, I thought someone should wash his mouth out with soap.
It’s going to be difficult to come up with some exact formula governing vulgar language used by public officials. I get that. And so many of these foul mouthers holler that they have the right to say what they want because they have freedom of speech. But what about us? What about our right to expect and have freedom of decency?
Peace and Justice
Jim Brown
