History of Swear Words is about exploring different perspectives of swear words. In the article “‘Damn that’s good’: Evangelical group wants Burger King to clean up Impossible Whopper ad,” it discusses the controversy around profanity in a Burger King advertisement. A man in the commercial tasted their burger and responded by saying “damn, that’s good!” The activist group, One Million Moms, was aiming to have the commercial canceled or edit out the word “damn.” This issue relates to our topic in various ways, which is important because we can use this as a good example of good interview journalism techniques to use in our podcast.
People like Timothy Jay, a professor of psychology emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, voiced their opinion on the issue. Timothy Jay responded to the issue by saying that cursing has now become more mainstream, “the religious right is obviously more empowered by the conservative climate we have right now, so that’s why it hits a nerve.” This quote shows why he thinks the One Million Moms are pressed about the advertisement. Then he goes on to add that they’re not complaining about isn’t banned and provides examples supporting his argument. He stated political leaders like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders that have said the occasional d-word. This is trying to prove the point that it isn’t as significant as the One Million Moms have made it out to be.
Another perspective was presented by Angeline Close Scheinbaum, the associate professor of marketing at Clemson University. The article mentioned that she discussed that companies are after “brand authenticity” with their marketing. Meaning the goal of brand authenticity is “capturing raw, unedited emotions that convey a lasting message.” The quote is what Angeline is referring to what Burger King was doing in the commercial. Instead of having the people’s reactions in the commercials filtered, Burger King wanted authentic, emotion-filled responses.
In order to get these quotations, we thought of possible questions that were asked during their interview. For example, a question asking Timothy Jay could be “Why do you think the One Million Moms chose this issue?” A question for Angeline Scheinbaum could’ve been “What do you think Burger King’s intentions were?”
If we were to ask some questions about this issue, we would ask the two main parties, Burger King and One Million Moms.
A question we would ask Burger King would be “What is your response to One Million Moms wanting you to cancel or edit the man saying ‘damn that’s good’ from your Impossible Whopper commercial?” This question would find out where Burger King stands on this issue because they have yet to comment on the issue. Another question for Burger King would be “What are the marketing limits in commercials on curse words?” Finding out the regulations of swear words in commercials will test if Burger King wasn’t supposed to include that interview in their commercial.
For the One Million Moms, we would ask “If the d-word were replaced by a word like sh*t, would you still be pushing for Burger King to delete or edit out that part in the commercial. This would find out if One Million Moms aren’t upset with the fact that they swore, but the fact that they offended their religion. Another question would be “Do you think the person in the commercial swore with bad intent?” This would check two things, whether intentions matter to them and what did they think of the person in the commercial. The final question would be “What message do you think having the d-word in the commercial sends to younger audiences?” This question tests how to sever they think the issue is and their beliefs on religion for younger children.
One Million Moms have good intentions when it comes to trying to keep the media clean, but Timothy and Angeline both discussed good points defending Burger King. The fact of the matter is nothing in the media is going to be one hundred percent clean and as kids growing up in this new technology age, we know that to be the case from our experiences. In our podcast, we discuss topics like people’s intentions and from our perspective, Burger King nor the man saying the d-word had any bad intention. He was just expressing his emotions and Burger King’s job was to capture that for people to see.
The History of Swear Words 