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KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the unhearked radio app. This is Michael Monks Reports on Michael Monks from KFI News and we've got the next couple of hours together. Happy Mother's Day, the all of you moms out there. Looks like we might be saying goodbye to a Hollywood landmark,
the RBS sign on Sunset Boulevard. This is something that if you've listened to my news coverage, you've maybe caught some reports on this because it's one of those old school Arby's Roast Beef sandwich signs, you know, like the old hats. You don't see those a lot anymore. But this thing on Sunset has apparently been very important to a lot of people for a long time. And the thing is is that the actual Rby's restaurant is gone,
but the sign it's still there. And this sign is apparently so important that I reported last summer that it's possible that this thing could be declared a city cultural landmark. That that's serious. The LA Cultural Heritage Commission voted last July to have the City Planning Department prepare a report on this side to see if it's worthy of consideration for placement on the you know, the city Landmark Register.
And the chairperson of the LA Cultural Heritage Commission last July said quote, I think it's an iconic example of roadside signage architecture, probably as important in terms of icon of roadside designation as the Golden Arches are of McDonald's. There's just one thing. The Arby's no longer operates, but the space is still viable. You're talking Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Something could go there and that Arby's closed after fifty
five years. I guess people ate a lot of roast beef there and have some attachment to this sign, but they're gonna have to learn how to eat chicken because Raising Canes has announced plans to become the new tenant of this location, and that means the Arby's sign is
probably gonna have to go. According to KTLA, Raising Canes has said this location is a strategic fit for the company as it grows here in Los Angeles, and they're gonna renovate the building and they're going to keep the drive through there and they're going to respect the iconic character of Sunset Boulevard, but KTLA reports that don't worry about that cowboy hat sign. You will be able to
see it, possibly at another nearby arby's location. No details on what that means, but that sign is in the process of being reviewed as a cultural landmark, and now it's going to have to find a new home. You know, I did a stupid thing while driving one day this
week on my way into Burbank from downtown. This is a drive I do every day, but you know that thing that happens when you're cruising down the freeway and suddenly your exit is coming and you sort of snap back to reality and you wonder, where have I been for the last fifteen minutes? How did I get here? It's weird, right, and we all do it. I know we all do it. I think it's normal. Our minds
kind of wander off and somehow we drive perfectly fine. Well, this wasn't exactly that, but my mind went somewhere else and I wasn't even two blocks from my apartment. I'm at a stoplight, waiting for traffic to ease so I could turn left, and there's a car facing me looking to make a left turn. The other way, and that driver is just gesturing at me wildly, and I'm thinking, what is your problem? I can see you want to turn left. What are you pointing at me? Calm down?
So the traffic coming towards me sort of eased and I went ahead and I made my left turn on a one way street the wrong way. So now I understand what those gestures were. She was warning me. And now there are more cars coming at me. They're freaking out. I have to turn around in the middle of the street, and I end up driving several blocks away in the right direction, but not the right way to work. And that's just because I'm embarrassed. At this point, I had
to get myself together. I'm so humility. Two blocks from my apartment. I drive this route every day. I just I guess I got ahead of myself and I tried to make this turn too soon. But all I could think about as I was trying to collect myself was what horrible things are those drivers saying about me right now? Because you know, something happens when we're driving and somebody is stupid, the vile, heinous one. This cash I'm Briginia
de Gastino in the case you're driving. We would never say these things to someone in passing at the mall or the grocery. If somebody cuts in front of you at the grocery, you might gently say, hey, the line is actually back here, and that person would probably say, oh, it's my bad, and then they would go to the back. But if they cut in front of you on the freeway,
you want them dead and you tell them. I don't know, I think it's weird, but there is some science apparently to back up why swearing makes us feel good in certain situations, why it's the only type of language that can bring us relief in that moment. So I called up an expert on language and profanity because I'm curious. So if you want to know more about why we cuss and why we feel the way we do about it,
stick around because he is with us next. Now, specifically, I called him up in the context of the attempt to ban swear words at la City Hall. I should be clearer. There's a lot of swearing at city Hall during city council meetings, and the council just has to endure it. But they are looking to ban a couple of very derogatory words, including the N word and the C word, and there was some developments on that this week, and so I reached out to him to talk about that.
And I know, if you like a dirty word or two, you might be curious about why, Like, what's so special about those awful, awful words?
Right?
Why can we say them in some places not in others? Why is it that only that word will do in the moment? That's coming up next? And then the spirit of Mother's Day? Did your mom let you cuss as a child or as a teenager? Mine didn't. My parents have foul, filthy mouths, by the way, but my brother and I we would not have dared. We would not have been allowed. I had friends, though, whose parents did let them cuss, and I was always so jealous of that.
And I mean the big cusswords, not a little cussword, the big ones, the mother of all cuss words. I felt like something that was blocked off from me, so you know, I wanted it even more. So That's probably why I enjoy swearing a lot.
Now.
It's kind of a shame we can't do it on radio, feel like it sometimes, but I can do it in front of my mom. Now I'm a grown man, and I just want to shout out my mother, Pammunks Jones back in Kentucky. Even though she didn't let me cuss as a kid, she certainly taught me how to do it as a grown up. So Happy Mother's Day, Mom, Looking forward to your visit in a couple of weeks.
We got a big couple of hours ahead. Zoo elephants create an awkward, tense exchange at La City Hall that's coming up this hour, and then in our next hour, the local man who has had enough of those teen bicycle gangs terrorizing shops and people. He's got a new website looking to bring some justice. It's Michael Monk's reports on Michael Monks from KFI News.
You're listening to KFI Am six forty on demand.
AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. This is Michael Monk's reports on Michael Monks from KFI News with you for the next couple of hours. The La City Council has punted on its plan to ban the N word and the C word from city council meetings. The only reason they're considering it in the first place is because people use them all the time at these meetings. It seems like the council wants to start with these words, despite the litany of profanity spewed at every meeting on
Spring Street. They were supposed to vote on this ban last week, but decided to stall after talking with the city attorney. They're worried about free speech lawsuits. But in the meantime, let's talk about cussing.
Why do we do it? Why does it feel good?
Sometimes? Professor Michael Adams at Indiana University is an expert on language and words, and he's the author of the book in Praise of Profanity. He joins us now Professor Michael Adams thinks, so much for taking time with us.
It's a pleasure to be here with you.
Indeed, you know, there are times where only certain words will do. And I'm curious, you know, instead of all, dang it, why does something like MFF or this seem to work so much better for us?
There's all kinds of reasons for that, and we don't know, we don't know exactly what that cognitive mechanism is. But there was this great experiment done at the University of Bristol and England a decade ago, maybe a little bit more where they put people's hands into these buckets of ice water, and they had to have a fist in there, and they had to keep it in as long as
they possibly could. And what they discovered was that the people who swore while they were doing that task were able to keep their their fists in the free in cold water longer. So that gives you a sense that something in the brain recognizes profanity as a release of tension. And so that's just one of the many advantages of it, I guess, is to get you through those tough times. It's certainly true that ordinary language sometimes fails, and when
it fails, you've got profanity to back you up. And it's really really good at expressing, say, utter frustration, But it's also good at expressing anger, which is I think, you know, what are the places you want to go.
That that's exactly right. And since you note that there is apparently some physiological connection to this vocabulary, why is it that we tend to frown on some words if there is some sort of physical benefit to using it.
You know, some of it is just rooted in history and we can't get past it. I mean, sixteenth century Protestantism rises. People are very big into public decorum and nobody wants to talk about sex or farting or things that you know you find often in medieval literature. But they're clamping down in some instances, at least in England, which is the place I know the best, on what they considered bad language. Bad language for its content, not
necessarily for its expressiveness. And you know, the theaters in London were filled with this language and we're shut down in sixteen hundred for a number of reasons, but one of them was that they were just they were just not the moral guide that the aldermen of London wanted for the people of London because of the language they were using. So this isn't a new problem. We've had a profanity on the stage, so to speak, for a long time, and people have been trying to erase it.
But things have changed, I think after the Second World War.
Just to use that as a watershed, it's a little bit, it's a little bit imprecise, but we get to a point where we start to use profanity more like slang than we do like old fashioned profanity, and so the taboo around it loosens and you can tell that with words like the F word, right, because people can use that in all kinds of situations, because they can express themselves in other ways, and so it's extremely useful and it's not about sex at all when they're using it.
So the thing that was originally taboo about it, that's just disappeared. And it's still something that's frowned upon in some settings, but you'll notice it's not frowned upon now the way it was, say a couple hundred years ago in public discourse.
You're an expert on language. Is there a more versatile word than the F word? I mean, you can use it in all kinds of different context. No.
No, I'll give a little shout out here to Jesse Sheidlower's wonderful book The F Word, which will show you not just how the F word itself is used, but all the words that we've developed from the F word, like f wad and you mentioned the MF word a little while ago, and all kinds of we have, all kinds of opportunity needs to use it. And when we when we don't see exactly the right F word for us to use it in a particular case, we will
sometimes come up with a new one. Yeah, it's pretty amazing that you can do so much with just one word. But that's one of the advantages of this vocabulary. It's very narrow, but it's very expressive, and so people can use it expressively, you know, again, sometimes in anger, sometimes
in frustration. I mean, my favorite example is that, you know, if you walk out of the grocery store with your your groceries and paper bags and it's raining and you get to the curb and the bottom falls out of the bags and all the groceries fall to the ground and a car drives by and splashes water all over you. You know, sugar is not going to work in that instance, Right, You're going to need something that goes beyond everyday language
to vent your frustration in that case. And I think that most of us when profanity is used in that way, but we don't object to it strenuously. But some of the things that have been happening in the La City Council meeting sounds much more dire than just those frustrated moments of using the word.
Yeah, they certainly do. And thank you for helping me with that transition. I appreciated because obviously the vulgarities that are spewed at La City Hall at every single regular council meeting, at committee meetings. It's like nothing I've ever seen before in all my years of covering local governments. And the city councils of course put forth this motion
where they're thinking about trying to ban certain words. Now, this is not the F word, they can't get rid of that yet, these our more profane words that are insulting, an offense of the N word and the C word, and they haven't moved forward on that because they are concerned about being sued that this may be a First
Amendment issue. But I was hoping the reason I wanted to talk to you was why do you think folks use those words as a tool to antagonize politicians rather than relying on just the facts of a case.
Well, they may be doing that. Although the N word, for instance, is just it's just an awful word, and it's meant to be hurtful. There's there's rarely an instance in which somebody is using it where it's not a slur against someone. And I would make a distinction myself between slurs and what we usually consider profanity because slurs are they're necessarily weaponized. I mean, that's what they're for is to put people down, dismiss them, put them in a corner. And that's not the way. We use a
lot of profanity, at least not all the time. But the sea word is an interesting case because the sea word is much more accepted in other parts of the anglophone world. I mean, if you were in Ireland or Australia, I'm not sure they would understand why there.
Was how they use it all the time.
The word at all. They use it all the time, but they use it they use it in a slang year way where it doesn't have to be used as a weapon against a woman or be a diminishing term. As a matter of fact, you've got some evidence this is I think not determined yet. It's not you know,
sort of come to full full fruition. But it may be that women are beginning to use the sea word among themselves the way maybe they were using the B word a couple of decades ago, in order to build solidarity, in order to reclaim it for women and their use. And so I would not as a man, walk into a room filled with women and use the sea word with abandon as though somehow it were all right to do so now, because I don't think that that's the case.
But it's actually a little socially more complicated than at first it seems. But it does sound like what's going on in those city council meetings is that they're being used to characterize people really negatively, and so the sea words being used more as a slur than it's being used as a slang word.
But what about those First Amendment concerns. We'll talk about that in the context of l Hall.
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand I AM.
Six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. This is Michael Monks Reports on Michael Monks from KFI News with you for the next ninety minutes. We're joined by language expert and Indiana University professor Michael Adams. The battle over bad words at La City Hall. City council seems ready to move on a ban of certain derogatory words, not yet on general profanity. What's at stake here?
The First Amendment issue, though, is worth talking about. Now. I'm not a lawyer and can't speak as one, but there was a very important case a few years ago Mattal v. Tam that was decided by the Supreme Court. A group called the Slants. They're a musical group. I should have specified that a musical group called the Slants wanted to trademark that name for their band, and they were told by the Trademark Trial and a Field Boys that they couldn't do so because the law says, or said,
that you can't use disparaging terms as trademark terms. You can use them, but you can't trademark them and claim that they're your property, so to speak, in commerce. And what the Supreme Court decided was that the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board was wrong, that the Slants, while a slur, was expressive of an identity that the band was trying to get across, and as expressive speech, it was protected
by the First Amendment. So the Supreme Court overruled the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and that opened the door then for slurs to be used as trademark terms. I haven't seen a whole lot of them being used that way, but I can imagine the city council thinking, well, if it's okay to use a slur as a trademark, How can I keep it out of our meeting? Right? And it would have to be because the court supported some notion of civil decorum within that space. And I don't
know how. I don't know how council rooms work, but I could speak to that in my class am I think, and I think the university and courts with support that I can set the I can set the tone for speech in my classroom, you know, just as an isolated space. And maybe maybe meetings can do that too. I don't know. But as I said, I'm not a lawyer.
Well you nailed it. You nailed it because to be worried about it, yeah, and for sure. I mean they've been sued before over attempts to stop this. But the line of questioning that you just raised there about what type of tone can you set in certain environments? That seems to be the avenue that they're pursuing.
Now.
This issue was to come to a vote last week. They decided to put it off after going into a closed executive session. So they might have gotten some advice from their attorneys that this is not ripe yet, but that's still lingering in the meantime. You know, City Hall municipal space is no matter where you are, La or Bloomington, Indiana.
You've got sort of an idea that this is a place where, of course legislation takes place, legislating takes place, and proclamations of all that, but also where kids and your neighbors can go not just to watch how government works, but maybe to be honored. And that happens even in big cities like La. You might see the random high school that won the softball championship come down all and be honored. But before they are they are subjected to this type of language. And as we know at the
beginning of our conversation, it's kind of frowned upon. But you're an author also, you wrote a book in praise of profanity. There is a place for it, right, I mean this, this is a type of language that is worthwhile.
Yeah, no, I think it absolutely is. It's not it's not accidental that the first instances of the F word we have appear in poems in the fifteenth century. It's esthetic speech in some in some contexts, and and it's in the poetry of everyday life if you want to look at it that way too, because it's a way that we can emphasize things. It's a way that we can amplify things. It's a way that we can deflect
things that so many uses. As we were talking about it before, it's good for building bonds with people, because you know, doing something that's a little bit wrong with your friends binds you to your friends much in the same way that young girls tend not to shoplift on their own, they tend to shoplift in groups, and they do it because then after that they have to keep their mouths shut about it because they broke the law and you're bound forever. Right in locker room speech is
kind of the same dynamic. So I mean that's a good thing about profanity. We need ways of proving to one another that we're, you know, so to speak, the right kind of person, the sort of person that you can have a secret with or have some level of intimacy with. And that doesn't mean that you're swearing all the time. That it can be a litmus test I think sometimes for belonging to a group. Have you ever seen that episode of The Wire in the first season.
I think it's episode five where the two main detectives go to an old, old crime scene and they're walking around noticing all these things that they can't quite believe. And it lasts for about ten minutes, I think, and all they user versions of the F word. There's no other dialogue in there at all because they are astounded and confused. And then one time the guy hits a
singer with a hammer or something. I forget exactly what the what the injury was, you know, So then you got that particular type of F word use you need, you need the F words sometimes because again ordinary words will fail. So there are definitely good things about it.
But I will say to underscore an important distinction. There's a difference between swearing with people, as in, you know, consolidating or identity in a group or building group bonds or that sort of thing, and swearing at somebody, in which case it's got a different use and it's it's weaponized and you don't have to do that with profanity. You can do that with lots of words, you know,
weaponized speech and work against somebody else's interests. If you come from South, you know what it means to have somebody say bless his heart or or bless her heart. I mean, there's no there's no worse put down even though there's no swear word there.
Hey, I'm from Kentucky. I know that one.
Well, yeah, but I mean so there's no So it's not just profanity that that we weaponize, but it certainly is identified quickly as a weapon when it's used that way. And you know, I don't think that there's any you know, we're not out here to harm one another, surely with our language or anything else. I mean, that's not that's not the American way. And uh, and I think that there's reasons for people maybe to pull pull back from attacking people with language or you know, maybe in any
other way too. But again, that's not inherently a problem of profanity. That's got to do with the way people use profanity. Back to the issue of the of the of the La City Council. You know, maybe they can protect their space because I know that judges can support their space in the courtroom. They can say in my court room, you will not use that sort of language, right, So, you know, maybe there's a way for the city council to regulate speech in that official setting where they wouldn't
be able to do it otherwise. I don't know. It's all in the future, it'll be in the news.
Well, be careful. I don't want them to call you as an expert witness, because if there's anything that takes a long time, it's a Los Angeles City Council meeting, and you don't want to be caught.
Up in that. Well, I'm grateful for your concern. I probably won't call me. We'll see and I'll endure what I have to endure, you know. But the thing is too, I mean, I don't see that happening very often in real time. I would, i admit, be kind of interested in seeing how people were behaving and who knows you live and you learn maybe I would revise some of my ideas about how we're using profanity effectively or not in the twenty first century.
Professor Michael Adams, Indiana University. So grateful you took the effing time to talk to KFI about bad words. Appreciate it. Hope we can talk again.
Yeah, well, I'd be very happy to do that. It was a pleasure today.
Up next, LA is dealing with a tight budget. They're fighting over a lot of spending choices at city Hall. But imagine my surprise when the most tension erupted during questions about elephants at the La Zoo. That's next on Michael Monks Reports Here on KFI AM six forty.
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. This is Michael Monks Reports. I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. Coming up in our next hour. Roving gangs of teenagers on bicycles terrorizing parts of Los Angeles, seemingly without consequences. They ransack convenience stores, beat up people, and in one instance, steal liquor from a Ralph's store in South LA and then attack a gay couple outside. One of those guys
is with us because he's had it. He started a website and he wants to find these little punks and hold them account. That's coming up. But first, another depressing week at La City Hall when it comes to the money and where it's all gone and where it's not going to go. The city has a billion dollar budget shortfall. Mayor Bass has proposed around sixteen hundred layoffs, but there's been some hope even from the mayor that it won't happen. Maybe the state will bail us out, maybe President Trump
comes to the rescue. Well, Councilwoman Katie Arslavsky, chair of the Budget Committee, poured ice cold water on those dreams. This week.
We've reviewed the budget, We've heard from departments, from city employees, from the public. For many of you in the audience, the reality is there is not a way to restore every position proposed for layoff. There just isn't. This will not be a no layoff budget. When this budget was first proposed, there was hope that layoffs could be avoided with help from Sacramento, and while we continue to wait for an update as of today May eighth, that support
has not materialized. The outlook for federal assistances, as we can all imagine, similarly leak. It's hard to acknowledge this, but it's the truth. What's also true, though, is that we will put together a balanced budget, one that restores key services to the extent possible and minimizes our structural deficit heading into next year, which will almost certainly be a tough one as well.
There will be layoffs, but maybe not as many. More than four hundred of those layoffs are targeting the LAPD, not officers, but civilian workers. Chief Jim McDonald told the Budget Committee that's bad. These folks do important work and the pursuit of justice, evidence and DNA analysis, those sorts of things. The Budget Committee thinks it can save more than one hundred of those jobs. It would require the police department to slow down its hiring. It's been wanting
ten thousand officers for years. It's been stuck in the eighty five eighty seven hundred range. Probably won't be hard to slow down hiring. Chief McDonald has been pretty open about how hard it's been to get people. The committee might also be able to save some jobs in other departments by slashing the Mayor's Inside Safe Homeless program. It suggested cutting funding for it by ten million dollars and also scrapping a new firefighter unit that would have responded
to homeless issues. But it's going to be a bleak day when that budget is finalized. The Budget Committee also had a weird exchange when the La Zoo showed up to talk about its financial situation. There are two old elephants at the zoo, Billy and Tina, and they're supposed to be shipped off to Tulsa to spend their final years. Councilman Bob Blumenfield doesn't like that idea. He wants the council to have some time to review the eighty thousand
dollars cost. Maybe it could be done more cheaply at another elephant sanctuary, maybe one in Tennessee or northern California, but Zoo Director Denise Verrett wouldn't commit to giving counsel that opportunity. Here's that awkward exchange.
And that ultimately that would be vetted and would be a public process that we could go through. Not dictating the outcome of that, but I am a as the motion and this council dictating that we before those elephants are moved anywhere, that that come to the Council for the oversight.
So can you promise.
Me here that those elephants will not be moved until the council has that chance to review that report and vote on it.
What I can promise you is that I am always going to make decisions that are for the best interest of the animals at the zoo, including the elephants.
Okay, that's not good enough, appreciate it.
But that exact exchange repeated itself when Bloomenfield tried to rephrase the question to make it more budget oriented, since this was the budget committee. The Zoo is freezing its elephant exhibit indefinitely, but when Billy and Tina take off for Oklahoma, we'll have to wait and see. Either way, they'll get to enjoy the Olympics in twenty twenty eight. Softball and canoeing. They're not in LA. They're in Oklahoma.
When the rest of the Olympics come to LA in twenty eight, some hotel and airport workers may be making a lot more money, and that might be bad news for hotels in the airport. A different committee, the Economic and Jobs Committee, approved an ordinance that would see minimum wages for these workers go all the way to thirty dollars an hour by twenty twenty eight. They call it an Olympic wage. They're going to be busy during this time.
They want to be paid for it. Hotel owners and the folks who operate businesses at LAX have said this will kill us. The ordinance passed the committee anyway, with the backing of unions and activists. If the full Council approves the ordinance, wages would start going up immediately and then incrementally over the next few years. And right now tourism is not good. LA World Airport CEO John Ackerman, that's who oversees LAX. Basically, he spoke to the Budget Committee.
Tourism numbers also paint a concerning picture right now. California tourism fell in February and March, particularly from Canada and Mexico, with Canadian air tourism tourism down over fifteen percent and Mexican tourism down twenty four percent. Even worse, flight bookings from Canada to the US fell by over seventy percent in early twenty twenty five, prompting airlines to cut more than three hundred thousand seats from LAX through October.
So tourism is bad right now for a variety of reasons, and Ackerman told the committee it doesn't look like it's going to get better.
The LA Tourism and Convention visitor The Convention Bureau is anticipating you over your reductions and total international visitors to LA by between twenty five and thirty percent. Well, these projections are sobering. Is when times are toughest that we must work together to see how we can help one another and find opportunities in our challenges.
But the most difficult situation, he says, is for the businesses at the airport. He spelled it out for the committee. What's at stake at the minimum wage shoots up to thirty dollars.
One hundred percent of the business partners who expressed an opinion on the effect of that ordinance to me have said it will hurt their business and they will do less business in Los Angeles over the long term if that passes because of the additional pressure will put on their cost. That is what our partners are telling me. We are very concerned because we already have partners that are in difficulty. You know, this Council approved a relief
package last year for some of our concessionaires. They basically kept them afloat, and that was even before this ordinance, and we will be bringing a similar package for additional concessionaires in the not too distant future this summer because of pressure they.
Are already under. When that ordinance goes to the full Council, we'll have it covered for you right here on KFI News and coming up in the next hour. Violent and disruptive criminals, teenagers on bicycles wreaking havoc all over the city. A victim who has had enough joins us to talk about what he's doing to stop them, and tariffs on more movies. President Trump has suggested it. Actor John Voight
has encouraged it. What the local film industry has to say about that idea and whether it will help or hurt it when Michael Monks reports continues here on KFI AM six
Forty, KFI AM six forty on demand