 What is not increasing as time goes on?
Maledict oratory The high costs of low language. Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. "I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden." Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said "[expletive]" on the BBC. "It's live television," NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. "It's an emotional moment. Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. "In that case, we're [expletive] ," he says. Five years ago, he would have said "screwed." Twenty years ago, he would have said, "We're in big trouble." Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on. I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street.
 the amount of words considered taboo
 the amount of people allowed to swear without punishment  the amount of words considered taboo  the amount of profanity heard  societal tolerance