Banning five words won’t clean up the legislature

Back in the 1960s, legendary counterculture comedian George Carlin gained notoriety — and sparked no small measure of controversy — with a standup bit in which he described the seven words that can never be said on television.

The monologue was, in keeping with Carlin’s body of work during a politically charged career that spanned more than five decades, insightfully hilarious with a clear intention to provoke. A brilliant rumination on the power of speech, it cleverly dissected the profane nature of the seven words while also stripping them of their impact by repeating them out loud for comic effect.

The question of whether certain words should or shouldn’t be said was front and centre this week — albeit in a decidedly less chucklesome context — in the Manitoba legislature with the declaration by Speaker Tom Lindsey that five specific words are heretofore considered unparliamentary and banned from use in legislative proceedings.

In an ongoing — and, by all appearances, generally futile — effort to re-inject a measure of decorum to a chamber in which debate and discourse have grown more fractious, coarse and belligerent over time, Lindsey ruled MLAs can no longer call one another any of these: “bigot,” “homophobe,” “racist,” “misogynist” or “transphobe.”