At approximately 6:35 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1, Artemis II roared off its Florida launchpad on its 10-day journey to the moon and back again. Carrying a team of three men and a woman, Artemis was the first manned flight to the moon in 53 years.

Hundreds of thousands from around the country and the world gathered on Florida’s Space Coast to witness this historic launch, with millions more watching on televisions and computers. Many of those spectators were deeply moved as humanity once again reached for the stars.

One interview conducted that day snagged a lot of online attention. A CNN reporter asked a boy wearing a NASA hat and Go-Pro camera, “Why do you want to be here? Why do you love space? Why do you love being a part of history?”

The boy replied, “We’re going back to the f***ing moon, that’s why.”

The exchange went viral on social media, bringing enthusiastic headlines and commentary on some conservative sites. Both the articles and the comments mocked the reporter’s questions for being obvious, inane, and stupid, with the kid’s reply delivering a well-deserved smackdown. Some called for NASA to recognize and reward the kid’s enthusiasm.

Here are some of the comments about the boy following Nick Arama’s article at RedState, followed by some questions of my own:

GBenton: “Ideally, wouldn’t want my kid dropping an F Bomb on CNN – but he’s well adapted to the world he’s growing up in, and CNN sucks.” 

Question: Do we want kids “well-adapted” to today’s world?

Cafeblue32: “If he is a youtuber, the kid is already an ambitious hustler. Can we clone this kid please?”

Question: Are ambitious hustlers what we want our children to become?

Turtle: “I loved his response because it was a stupid question asked by a dumba$$ Marxist/DNC propagandist from CNN.”

Question: The reporter’s questions are standard in journalism, even when the answers appear obvious. In what way then were they stupid?

IdeClair: “I dare challenge dems to criticize the boy’s ‘inappropriate’ reference to the F word when they drop it every day.”

Question: If the boy’s use of f***ing is appropriate, as you imply here, and above criticism, then why refer to it as “the F word?” Why not use the word itself? And what will you think of a conservative who criticizes “the boy’s ‘inappropriate’ reference”? Because that’s what I’m about to do.

While the boy’s enthusiasm is commendable, what does his use of obscenity tell us about his life in school and at home? When he turns in an assignment to his teacher, does he say, “Here’s my f***ing homework?” At the dinner table, does he say, “Pass the f***ing butter, please?” And I wonder: Did his viral comment make his parents proud?

Next, let’s consider word usage. His deployment of f***ing is what I call an underliner adjective, added for emphasis rather than description. In “that was a darn good steak,” darn stresses but doesn’t describe “good steak.” Had he left the obscenity out of his answer – “We’re going back to the moon, that’s why!” – the enthusiasm in his voice alone would have underlined his entire statement. In short, his obscenity was superfluous except for grabbing media attention.

Another commenter notes, “As the son of a NASA project manager going back to the 60s, I have to say that kid’s response is so 1969.”

Dead wrong. The boy’s passion belongs to 1969, but not the vulgarity. No grownup or kid this boy’s age would have uttered this obscenity in a public place, on or off camera, and certainly no one at NASA would have used this sort of language in public. If I remember correctly, in “The Right Stuff,” his book about the Mercury astronauts, Tom Wolfe described in detail how the astronauts were even taught how to conduct themselves in public. Crudity such as this would have been verboten.

More in tune with that era was this comment from JAK: “Such strong language would have had me enjoying the subtle flavor of ivory soap back then.” A child of the 1950s and ’60s, I never heard anyone, adult or youngster, use the F word until attending military school in seventh grade. Even there, though cursing was not uncommon, that word was rare.

Today, of course, the word is ubiquitous, freely employed by everyone from politicians to podcasters, and as common in movies, books, and conversations as the trash littering some of our city streets and sidewalks. It’s also infectious. People may resist saying it, but if they’re like me, they still think or mutter it from time to time because they hear it so often.

Lots of people, including some of my conservative friends, will excuse or even celebrate vulgarity, but count me out. Call me a prude, a prig, a Puritan – I don’t care, but I’m dead-set against foul language and profanity. So bring back that old-fashioned bar of soap because we’ve got some mouth cleaning to do.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image Credit: Flickr-David Goehring, CC BY 2.0