In 1972, the comedian George Carlin identified seven words you couldn’t say on television. These were: “shit,” “piss,” “fuck,” “cunt,” “cocksucker,” “motherfucker,” and “tits.” Last Friday The New York Times identified 199 words and phrases you can’t say in the Trump administration (197 in today’s print edition). These include: “biased,” “climate science,” “female,” “women,” “socioeconomic,” “underprivileged,” and “cultural heritage.”
Obscenity sure ain’t what it used to be.
The Times’ list of Trump’s banned words, the paper said, is necessarily incomplete. It does not, for instance, include “Enola Gay,” banned as part of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s DEI purge for the hilarious reason that it included the offending word “gay.” (The dropping of the first atom bomb has long been controversial, but never for being woke.)
The Trump ban isn’t absolute. Some words and phrases, the Times reported, are barred outright from the federal government’s websites and government-funded school curricula, but others may be used with extreme discretion. Where encountered, this latter group is automatically flagged for review not only on government websites and in school curricula but also in grant proposals and contracts. As I understand it, when applying for a government grant it’s OK to say, “Give me some fuckin’ money” but not OK to say, “Give me some money to study trauma suffered by at-risk minorities,” because “trauma,” “at-risk,” and “minorities” are on the forbidden list.
Liberals are of course no strangers to playing Word Cop, and indeed in February 2021 the Times reported that the Biden administration nixed “illegal alien” and required that the word “tribal,” as applied to Native Americans, be spelled with a capital T. But these were mostly reversals of Trump policies that exiled phrases like “undocumented immigrant” and “climate change.” The phrase “climate change” is now back on Trump’s taboo list. With “undocumented immigrant,” it’s a bit more complicated. Both that phrase and “illegal immigrant” can no longer be used because the word “immigrant” is forbidden. Is that to encourage usage of the nasty pejorative “illegals”? Also, Trumpies, despite their own manifest tribalism, may not say “Tribal,” even with an unassuming lower-case t.
Say goodbye to “pregnant person,” a phrase the Biden administration favored as a nod to the transgender community. On similar grounds, LGBT and LGBTQ are now demoted to LGB. Regarding pregnancy, Trump’s Word Cops created an interesting problem for themselves. “Pregnant women” would be the logical substitute for “pregnant person,” but with “women” and “females” both on the taboo list we’re stuck calling them … “pregnant ladies”? That’s a strikingly inapt term to describe a 12-year-old rape victim who, because the Trump-appointed majority on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, couldn’t get an abortion in the state of Mississippi, and consequently began seventh grade as a 13-year-old mother. The solution here may be the indescribably sad term “pregnant preteen.”
“Men” is not on the taboo list, in deference to the political ascendency of the Manosphere. “Men who have sex with men” is on the taboo list, even though we have persuasive evidence that at least some within this homophobic subculture are gay. “Men who have sex with men” is a circumlocution for “male homosexual,” which, happily, is not on the taboo list; neither is “gay.” The Trumpies, pace Hegseth, appear to tolerate gay culture somewhat, so long as it excludes transexuals.
The terms “equality” and “inequality” are banned. May I remind our president that the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address both state that all men are created equal? Will Trump functionaries yank these foundational documents from the National Archives and Library of Congress? Variations on the word “equal” appear seven times in the Constitution. To be on the safe side, perhaps Trump will remove all three to that john at Mar-a-Lago.
Some of the words on the Times list are just baffling. The Trump administration won’t let anybody say “prostitute”? That sounds like a Biden holdover; the left is the only precinct I know where the word “prostitute” is taboo. You’re supposed to say “sex worker,” but that’s out because the Trump Word Cops put “sex” on their taboo list. I guess they’ll have to go back to “courtesan” or “tart.” Returning to the question of how a woke taboo became a Trump taboo: Perhaps what Trump intends to prevent is usage of the word “prostitute” as a verb to describe the groveling behavior of Lindsey Graham, JD Vance, Mike Johnson, and so many other Republican politicians who once scorned Trump.
Also, what’s wrong with “advocate”? That’s a neutral term. Conservatives advocate things all the time! Is it because there’s a gay magazine called The Advocate? The Advocate also happens to be the title of a play my late father wrote about the Sacco and Vanzetti case that ran for a week on Broadway in 1963. So yes, this is getting personal. In the same vein: I served in the late 1970s on the prose board of an undergraduate literary magazine called The Harvard Advocate, which (at least then) was apolitical to a fault. Maybe “Harvard” set off a trip wire; it’s not on the taboo list, but the Trump Justice Department hates the place and just put it under investigation for alleged antisemitism. Never mind that DOGE chief Elon Musk gave a Sieg Heil salute on inauguration night and that mimicking Musk’s gesture (which Musk insisted was misinterpreted) became all the rage among the Trump faithful at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference. Physician, heal thyself.
Another entirely neutral word the Trumpies have banned is “institutional.” We all know Trump is determined to destroy every government institution he can get his hands on, but to forbid the word itself raises matters to a higher level of fanaticism. You also can’t for some reason say “MSM,” even though that term (which stands for “mainstream media”) is entirely pejorative. Reporters for CNN don’t thrust out their chests to declare themselves representatives of the MSM. If Trump wants to ban a self-congratulatory term for the media, he should forbid “fourth estate.”
If you work in the Trump administration and want to get fired, post something online that includes the phrase “gender diversity.” “Diversity” is the single most banned word on the Trump taboo list, appearing no fewer than 10 times (15 if you add “diverse”). “Gender” places second, appearing nine times. And yes, the Trump administration specifically bans the phrase “gender diversity.” Apparently, there is nothing Trump loathes now more than gender diversity.
With that in mind, late Tuesday I searched the website of a government agency for “gender diversity” and was delighted to find no fewer than 193 entries. I won’t identify this agency because I don’t want to get its employees in trouble. But it seems the anti-Trump resistance is alive and well in the belly of the beast. As Carlin might say, we must continue to explore every means possible to stop this motherfucker.
