Wash Your Mouth Out

Profanity has become so commonplace that you might think the taboos against it have expired. They haven’t. A Harris Poll finds many Americans don’t want certain language to be used within their hearing. While that tendency is more evident among older people, the chart below indicates it’s shared by majorities of all age groups. Women were more likely than men (78 percent vs. 59 percent) to say there’s language they’d rather not hear. Blacks were more likely than whites to say so (78 percent vs.