Celebrating Cunt, Revising Gump

As Harrogate pointed out yesterday, February of '08 was an "effusive" month on the Rhetorical Situation. The month gave us a number of excellent posts, many of which centered on the Clintonian pantsuit and fashion in general; it gave us memorable phrases, such as "Romney is pissed" and "Fuck you, Tim Gunn"; and it also introduced us to Paperweight and to the Wisdom of Reverend John Todd [see comments section].

But this particular retrospective is not about those great moments in our Award-winning blog; this post is about the word Cunt. As many of you remember, February is the month that the C-Word officially entered the lexicon of TRS. It first appeared in celebration of Jane Fonda's use of the word on the Today Show, shortly followed by a transcript of Brooke Shields defending Fonda on the O'Reilly Factor. It also appeared in censored form here, where CUNT was the abbreviated name of the anti-Hillary group Citizens United Not Timid (to whose name Solon replied, "Seriously? This doesn't even make sense.").

But perhaps the most exciting use of the C-Word on TRS appeared on February 26 when Harrogate posted a photo from Feministing. Such an overt celebration of Cunt was uncomfortable for some in our blogging community, especially the most conservative and then newest member of our board, Reverend John Todd. The Good Reverend was so bothered by the four women with C-U-N-T written across their bodies that he was moved to revise the photo in a manner that reflected more accurately his traditional values. But, alas!, his efforts were futile, as he soon learned [see his comments] that the offensiveness of the photo could not be circumvented by elementary photoshop skills.