I'm A F**kin' Journalist

"They say journalism is the art of controlling your environment. But that's all wrong. Journalism is just a gun. It's only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that's all you need.

"Aim it right and you can blow a kneecap off the world..."
-- Spider Jerusalem

Get your retaliation in first, as my drill sergeant used to say. No doubt one or two of the few that stumble across this page will take umbrage with the prominent expletive displayed above. The problem with being born so late in the century is that most topics have already been covered by decent writers by the time I get to them, and the same is true here.

Stephen Fry - as close as our generation is going to get to an Oscar Wilde of our own - once penned a column about holding the record for the most utterances of the word 'f**k' in one television programme. His point being that a word describing the ultimate act of pleasure a man, woman or other can commit upon another shouldn't be shunned, shied away from or shoved into the cupboard of social unnacceptability. Instead, if we learned to use the word in common parlance, removed its taboo, used it as it should be used rather than as an expletive, then talking about the subject itself might not be so awkward for us British types.

Conversely if words such as genocide, rape, torture and murder were greeted with the same level of shock and social horror as f**k is, then maybe we might feel more shocked and upset and moved to action by the actual acts they describe.

Don't try to tell me that we already are moved by such things. We read about them in the newspapers, but how often is that all we do? How often are we reading about how others are dealing with these things instead of us. So you donate a fiver every couple of months to Amnesty International like the good liberal that you are, but so what? Your hands aren't dirty and that's all that counts. That fiver, whatever good it might be doing in the third world, is mostly being used to appease your own guilt at your inaction. How many marches have you been on and how many have you simply watched on the news? How many protests have seen you chanting and holding banners and wearing t-shirts and how many have simply been a photo you glanced at on the front page the next day? The problem is we're scared, all of us. Scared to leave the comfort of our respective ruts.

Anyway, I'm drifting from the subject, but we all need a rant every now and then. Tell you what, I'll remove the 'g' from the subject line and replace it with the family-friendly apostrophe. Don't say I never do anything for you. Now f**k off, it's late.

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