Aug 19, 2017 3 min read

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin is considered to be one of the most endangered Democrats up for re-election in 2018, given the Mountain State’s decisive shift into Republican hands over the last couple of decades.

You know what? To hear him tell it, he doesn’t care.

In fact, he doesn’t give a s–t.

“I don’t give a s–t, you understand? I just don’t give a s–t,” Manchin told a reporter from the Charleston Gazette-Mail, when asked about a charge by a potential GOP rival Manchin was trying to wriggle away from Democratic leadership in Washington, D.C. “Don’t care if I’m elected, don’t care if I get defeated, how about that. If they think because I’m up for election, that I can be wrangled into voting for s–t that I don’t like and can’t explain, they’re all crazy.”

Well, we’re guessing because Senate campaigns are expensive and grueling affairs Manchin does care if he is re-elected. That he does, indeed, give a s–t. And the use of the word s–t when speaking to a scribe is probably a calculated maneuver in that effort.

Though we’re far from reaching for the smelling salts or staggering to the fainting couch, we’re a little dismayed by this.

Manchin is not the only national politician to recently pepper his language with a little crudity. To be more precise, he is not the only Democrat with a national profile to work a little profanity into their discourse. Earlier this year, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez exclaimed during a speech, with children nearby, President Trump “doesn’t give a s–t about health care.” Kirsten Gillibrand, a senator from New York and likely 2020 presidential candidate, let loose with a couple of f-bombs in an interview with New York magazine. Sen. Kamala Harris, from California and, like Gillibrand, a probable 2020 contender, dropped an f-bomb in front of a San Francisco audience in the spring. And Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, who is mounting a long-odds campaign to defeat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, recently stated Cruz is “sure as s–t not serving his constituents.”

It’s easy to see what’s going on here. Tarred by their opponents as brie-eaters who don’t quite understand the salt-of-the-earth in the heartland, some Democrats are hoping to inject a little bit of that straight-talking, unvarnished Harry S. Truman mojo into their rhetoric. And why not? Republicans can hardly go after them for it when President Trump is channeling his id on Twitter. And, sure, the language changes all the time, standards shift, and words like s–t or f–k don’t carry the power to shock the way they once did.

But they are still among the seven words George Carlin pointed to in his classic 1972 monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” and it’s dispiriting to see them so blithely tossed around by lawmakers and leaders. If they want to use them privately, fine. Lots of people do. But there’s language you use in the solitude of your own four walls, and language you use with, shall we say, polite company.