Pinker on "Golly Waddles"

Recently, I reported on the oral argument at the Supreme Court in the case of FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., which I like to refer to as the "fuck and shit case."  The issue in the case is whether the FCC acted illegally by suddenly deciding to fine broadcasters who transmit so-called "fleeting" expletives such as, for example, "fuck" or "shit."  The most noteworthy aspect of the oral argument was the failure of any Justice to utter any actual swear word.  The highlight of the argument was undoubtedly when Justice Scalia used the phrase golly waddles as a euphemism for "fuck." 

Now, I have never heard the phrase "golly waddles" before, and I was unable to locate any reference to it by searching the internet, so like everyone else in America, I've spent the last couple of days wondering where the hell Scalia got this thing.  What I really wanted to do was ask some world famous expert on language about Scalia's phrase.  But where to find one?

Luckily, Steven Pinker and I happen to live in the same building (his loft is about fifteen times bigger and about a hundred times nicer than mine, but that's a different story).  Pinker is a Professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard, and he is truly a world famous expert on language, as well as a whole lot of other things.  He has written a slew of important and accessible books about language and the brain, the most recent of which is the New York Times bestselling The Stuff of Thought, which you can and should buy from Amazon here.  He's a frequent contributor to just about every publication you can think of.  His most recent piece that I know of is an article in the Atlantic Monthly called Freedom's Curse, which is about, lo and behold, the fuck and shit case.

When I was researching Holy Hullabaloos, Pinker was nice enough to talk to me for a good while about evolution and intelligent design and the nature of science, and there's a paragraph recounting our conversation in the chapter of the book about my trip to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Since I had spoken to him before, I figured I'd ask him if he had ever heard of the phrase "golly waddles" or if he had any insight into what Scalia was thinking about when he said it.  The following is Pinker's response:   

"I am pretty sure that Scalia made up 'golly waddles' on the spot. He needed a hypothetical term that was not "fuck," and so used that; I don't think it was an allusion to any commonly used euphemism. On the other hand he was certainly influenced by the truncated profanities for “God” that are ubiquitous in polite speech, such as golly, gosh, egad, gad, gadzooks, good grief, goodness gracious, Great Caesar’s ghost, and Great Scott. Similar truncations pop up for just about every taboo term, including Jesus (gee, gee whiz, gee willikers, geez, jeepers creepers, Jiminy Cricket, Judas Priest, Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat), shit (shame, sheesh, shivers, shoot, shucks, squat, sugar), and fuck (fiddlesticks, fiddledeedee, foo, fudge, fug, fuzz, flaming, flipping, freaking, frigging, effing). I'm not sure why he felt he needed a second word in his hypothetical euphemism, but it may have been inspired by the prevalence of two-part euphemisms for bullshit, like applesauce, balderdash, blatherskite, claptrap, codswallop, flapdoodle, hogwash, horsefeathers, humbug, moonshine, poppycock, tommyrot."

Well, gadzooks and gee willikers, it would seem that Scalia's euphemism for fiddledeedee is just a bunch of flapdoodle!

Comments

[cheap gaia gold]

Since I had spoken to him before, I figured I'd ask him if he had ever heard of the phrase "golly waddles" or if he had any insight into what Scalia was thinking about when he said it.