A few weeks back I received an email from a reader who was concerned that I had failed to comment on reports that Vice President Dick Cheney had hurled a vulgar profanity at Patrick Leahy during a photo shoot on the Senate floor. I replied that he was correct, but neither had I written on the subject of John F. Kerry’s Rolling Stone interview in which he used the same word.

While it is one thing to let loose with an obscenity in a private conversation when angry or upset, it is quite another to use it in a venue intended for public consumption. The latter would suggest that the use of the word was meant to appeal to a target audience, one that views such language as acceptable and even artful.

That audience, influenced by today’s shapers of culture in the entertainment world, includes too many of the last few generations whose every sentence seems unutterable without some abusive language. And the curse word of choice is of the four-letter variety and begins with the letter ‘f’.

Is it any wonder that most of today’s youth have a diminished vocabulary, when that single word is, at various times, used as a noun, verb, adjective and adverb? Why bother to learn and use descriptive language when dropping the f-bomb, in all its myriad inflections will suffice?

Cursing has and always will be part of the national vernacular and it has its place in certain circumstances. Sadly, these circumstances have expanded to include the stage, the screen, rock and rap music as well as those instances that take place in what used to be called “mixed company”--another gift to posterity from the harridans of the feminist movement.

Outbursts of swearing should be, as pro-abortionists like to say, legal and rare. Profanity is meant to shock, and not awe, but its constant use has rendered it unshocking but no less offensive, not the least reason being the sheer lack of imagination shown by its user. It would be interesting to hear the rest of the dressing down given Senator Leahy by Cheney. I’m sure the bevy of epithets that should have or did accompany the word in question were much richer in content, but maybe not as appropriate for the occasion.

That a prominent man like Cheney would utter a profanity in rebuking a rival--particularly one who has accused him of treachery--is decidedly unremarkable. The fact that it was reported so quickly and widely is. This is a relatively new tactic employed by the left; that any transgression, no matter how minor, committed by those on the right is hypocrisy and therefore must be exploited.

Typical is this Dana Milbank piece in the Washington Post in which George Bush is taken to the woodshed for Cheney’s misdeed:

President Bush had made his vow to "change the tone in Washington" a central part of his 2000 campaign, calling bipartisan cooperation "the challenge of our moment. Our nation must rise above a house divided," he said in his victory speech in December 2000. "I know America wants reconciliation and unity. I know Americans want progress. And we will seize this moment and deliver."

Mr. Milbank apparently thinks a single utterance by Dick Cheney constitutes a policy decision as opposed to a mere reprimand of one who has vigorously resisted embracing the olive branch so graciously offered by President Bush as outlined above.

It is amusing that those who scold the GOP for not living up to its part in changing “the tone in Washington” have no problem ignoring the tone adopted by the other side. This would include the vulgar and childish behavior exhibited at last week’s Democratic fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall. Once again the usual gang of Hollywood leftists chipped in to contribute what today passes for their patriotic bit; smearing and slandering the Commander In Chief during wartime.

When President Bush made self-deprecating jokes about WMDs at a press dinner in February, the media howled that it was tasteless. Full of taste though are spite-filled celebrities who call the President a “killer,” a “cheap thug” and a “liar.” Witty are they who use bathroom humor and gutter talk to gin up hate. And fit to lead the country are candidates who heartily applaud such efforts and remark that those who performed them "conveyed the heart and soul of America."

It is said that a man’s character can be known by the company he keeps and if this is true, we got a good glimpse into the nature of John Kerry last week in New York.

Lisa Fabrizio