Like a Motherfucker

by James Hanna

Liana S

Nietzsche said it well: “In individuals madness is rare, but in groups it is the rule.” But just what facilitates the madness of groups, their cow-like instinct to reject contemplation in favor of a collective cud? Is it the retractability of language, its potential to shrink all thought to the level of a verbal belch? If you cannot articulate, you cannot think — demagogues know this well. And so they appeal to the gut — not the mind. A couple of well-timed slogans, a few jingoistic rhymes — that’s all that is needed to sway a crowd and turn it into a herd.

In Orwell’s 1984, language is skillfully dismantled. The architects of Newspeak, a mind-dulling version of English, worked meticulously to eliminate hundreds of troublesome words. They dug like surgeons to rid the tongue of nuance and ambiguity. But are such efforts necessary? Given the drift of the common idiom, this is bound to happen anyway. Verbs will die out, nouns will perish, and we’ll have no need of grammar. Eventually, even our similes will fade — all but that cheery, all-purpose phrase: “like a motherfucker.”

Think about it. You can be as strong as a motherfucker, as sweet as a motherfucker, even as sexy as one. You can be as smart as a motherfucker, as brave as a motherfucker, also as fast as a motherfucker. If we give this infectious phrase full rein, it could dominate even further. “How did you bowl today, Papa?” I ask. “Like a motherfucker,” he replies. “Mama, how was American Idol?” I coo. “Bitchin’,” she says. “Those contestants sang like motherfuckers.”

But why should a motherfucker, a partner in Oedipal incest, have the monopoly of a god? Why should he be anything but pitiful, loathsome, and vile? What qualifies him to be sexy, what licenses him to be sweet? How can he even be smart or fast unless he evades the police? That we can grant him Olympian stature is a dismal indictment of what language can become.

The denser the group, the thinner the language — that seems to be the rule. And the thinner the language, the more accessible the psyche to the polemics of excess. Consider a chat I overheard at the Indiana Penal Farm, an overpopulated Midwest prison where I worked as an inmate counselor. The conversation took place among several inmates sitting in the dining hall.

“So what did that officer do to you, Jackson, while you was in the hole?”

“The bitch took away my Cadillac then he put me on report.”

“That ain’t cool at all, bro. Can you believe that shit?”

“All I was doing was mindin’ the store when that bitch got in my face. He been watchin’ me like a motherfucker.”

“Dog, that’s Gestapo shit — know what I mean? What choo gonna do ’bout it?”

“Gonna dust his motherfuckin’ ass off is what I’m gonna do.”

In this incident of groupspeak, an inmate, aggrieved that an officer confiscated a rope made of towels, plans to knife him. Would this decision have happened without the perversion of language? Calling a rope a “Cadillac” lends it inordinate value. Describing a hit as a “dusting” diminishes its grisly effect. And of course that pet word, motherfucker, spices the whole exchange. Like ketchup poured over sodden fries, it facilitates easy digestion.

After locking Jackson up in the Special Housing Unit, I felt the call of the muse. So I wrote the incident into a script and distributed it to a self-help class: a group of thirty inmates to whom I taught interpersonal skills. I had begun to doubt the value of the course curriculum: the most adept of lawbreakers have excellent interpersonal skills. Unfortunately, they use them to con and, in some cases, seduce children. But the study of rhetoric seemed useful enough since language validates crime. And most of the devices of rhetoric were contained in that simple chat.

I chose several inmates, assigned them roles, and had them perform the incident as a skit. Afterwards, I quizzed the class on how language was misused. A few quick prompts were all I needed to illicit torrential responses.

“Hyperbole?” I asked them.

The class spoke almost in unison, “That’s when Jackson’s roadie said, ‘Can you believe that shit?’”

“That’s also a rhetorical question,” I said. “Did you notice anything else?”

“When Jackson said he was mindin’ the store, he hadda be dealin’ drugs. The only use for a Cadillac is to pass contraband between cells. The fucker was minimizing.”

“He also used a euphemism,” I said. “Did you spot any more of those?”

The class paused only a moment before offering a case in point. “Jackson said he was gonna dust the officer off, like maybe the fucker had lint on his shirt. Ain’t no dusting about it, he was gonna kill the dude.”

“How about false analogies? You notice any of those?”

Hardly a minute passed before the class spoke up again. “Jackson’s road dog said the Gestapo was there, but there weren’t no Nazis around. Only an officer walkin’ the range and tryin’ to do his job.”

“How about evading the question?” I asked. “Did Jackson dodge the issue when the officer wrote him up?”

The class heaved a collective sigh as though I were trying to be cute. With the certainty of a hanging judge, they spoke up once again. “He said the officer was spyin’ on his ass. That ain’t what was comin’ down. The motherfuckin’ issue was that Jackson was hustlin’ drugs.”

“How about labeling? Any of that?”

“He called the officer a bitch. A bitch deserves to be punished, bro, but a strict-ass officer don’t.”

Finishing the exercise, I placed them in groups and had them do skits of their own. After each skit, we discussed the scenario and reviewed the use of polemics. The quality of the skits was excellent, the observations astute. And when the class was over, the performers all took a bow.

Having witnessed their flexibility of mind, I was somewhat taken aback. Why, I wondered, did they allow themselves to wallow in toxic slang? Why had they been seduced by a jargon that could only sanctify crime? And why did most of them return to prison within five years of release?

Had I done them any good at all? I had no answer for that. My pitch was a proverbial shot in the dark — there was no way to gauge the results. But I remember overhearing an exchange in the yard while I was walking back to my office.

“Who that joker?” an inmate asked as I strode past the basketball courts.

“Our instructor,” said another. “He’s one cool-ass dude. Makes you think like a motherfucker.”

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James Hanna is a retired probation officer and a former fiction editor of The Sand Hill Review. His stories have appeared in many journals and have received three Pushcart nominations. His books are available on Amazon.