I was amused to read in the facebook thread someone equating swearing with hooliganism. Heaven help these people if they ever actually saw real hooliganism, and thankfully they're unlikely to anywhere in this country.
I also laugh at the 'sinking to their level' comments with respect to the Newcastle supporters. On numbers alone, they've got it all over us. The numbers bring noise and atmosphere, and that's a good thing. They also bring a smattering of dickheads and all credit to Furns and a couple of other key guys up there - they've worked pretty hard to minimise that, including working in consultation with security and police and their club to try to keep it nice.
In a few ways I'd rather be in their position, with a number of dickheads to weed out but big numbers, than where we are - rebuilding what was a fractured and depleted supporter base.
I think there are more offensive things than swearing too. Some songs that have been sung over the years were beyond the pale and aren't sung anymore, but an F-bomb ain't gonna kill anyone.
There's a simple reason why swearing happens in songs - the people who sing them tend to be young men, most of whom (like me) tend to drop a few choice words from time to time. I swear, I tend to do it as an exclamation or for emphasis. I don't swear in place of punctuation as some do, but frankly I don't think it's a huge issue.
There are people I swear around and there are people I don't. My grandmother, my in-laws and my extended family generally don't get the pleasure of my bon mots, but it's not at all uncommon in my workplace or in businesses and other organisations I deal with. In short, they're everyday words - though I tend not to say c**t all that often.
If I walk down the street, on the football field, near school grounds or whatever (there's a primary school on the corner of my street) I hear plenty, and plenty of people are more comfortable saying c**t than I am. We can't pretend that people in the ground haven't heard these words.
If people find it distasteful, treat it the same way as hearing someone in the street, on the train, wherever else you might happen to be. Tell your kids that some people use those words, you prefer not to and that they aren't to. Teach them about context - people will exclaim words they won't otherwise use.
Consequently, saying shit or f**k in a chant is not something that bothers me. I think there's a fair degree of censorship going on already in that there are things that people won't sing and the group won't support, but to ask a group to not sing words which are used in everyday conversation is just odd. People might get the shits at the language, but they also get the shits when we're not making enough noise to entertain them. They'll actively complain about one of them, but the other one is just as likely to result in them not coming to the game.
Face it - if it's a dire 0-0 draw where we're plugging away and getting nowhere because the other team's popped 10 behind the ball, I'd rather we be moderately entertaining and interesting for the 9/10 people who couldn't give a flying f**k if we sear than be tame (and small, and quiet) for the 1/10 that might have a problem.
And I'd be enormously surprised if it's as many as 1/10 have a problem. The 9/10 will at least be able to say that they enjoyed the atmosphere even if the game was dire, but I'd rather 1/10 complain about swearing than 10/10 saying "isn't it a shame we can't hear the supporters".
