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The Media

October 2009

Our diminished debate

by James Bowman

On loss of manners in civil affairs.

As I write, the media world continues to debate what Serena Williams said, since the noise of the crowd at the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament drowned out at least some of her words. By one account, those words included: “I swear to God I’m f----- going to take this f----- ball and shove it down your f----- throat. You hear that? I swear to God.” Another subtracts one of these bits of improbable fornication and the double reference to the Almighty, making the threat only a hypothetical one: “If I could, I would take this f----- ball and shove it down your f----- throat.” A third account has it that this implied threat was unambiguously aspirational, in a detached and merely fanciful way: “I wish I could take this f----- ball and shove it down your f----- throat!”—as if to say that, in spite of the vehemence of the language, both Serena Williams and her in ...

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James Bowman is the author of Honor: A History (Encounter Books) and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, also published by Encounter (2008) .


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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 28 October 2009, on page 61

Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

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