I first heard of the No Cussing club online, and read both the Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica articles (both articles are full of invaluable information, though ED is more funny) and decided to check out the club site. I am appalled at how poorly designed that site is, and the sheer cheesiness of the whole site.
This book and site are a laugh. I can understand the principle of speaking more cleanly - some people DO cuss too much, but instead of telling these kids to please stop, he had to go and create a club. In principle, it sounds silly. In practice, it's actually ludicrous. This poor kid has set himself up to be cussed at for his club - and I don't blame these people who want to cuss at him.
Cusswords exist in society for a reason. Yes, they're sometimes abused, but honestly, everything always has some people who abuse it. I'm not going to exclaim a silly or cutesy word when I cut myself with a knife. I'm going to blurt out a nice profanity that makes me feel better. Or if something really bad happens, I'll go 'OH SHI...' instead of saying 'whoops, that's bad!' or anything like that. There are certain situations where a simply-uttered profane word says it all, and it feels good to just say that word, even just to yourself when nobody's around.
You know what they say about not judging a book by its cover, right? Well, you can, for this one. Instead of a relaxed, natural pose with a friendly smile, McKay has chosen to show you his side, and his expression... it's hard to describe. It's like he's trying to pose as cool, looking down at you for cussing, and smirking at the same time. And also a pathetic attempt at 'I'm too cool to cuss'. I guess this is the best way I could describe his facial expression and pose, but he fails at that. But I know one thing that's very clear to me.
I want to punch his face. Hard. And knock that weird expression off his face. Who thought it would be a good idea to have him pose like that, instead of a welcoming/friendly smile? This is why the No Cussing Club doesn't work. The whole idea has been gone about in an entirely wrong way, and this book is just another indication of the wrongness of the whole No Cussing Club.
McKay's goal is to stop cussing, but he's only made the situation worse. Perhaps if he had gone about the campaign in a different way - trying to improve language as an whole instead of adopting a OMG ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY!!! towards swear words, he'd have better results. As an American citizen, I'm more concerned about people using bad spelling and grammar and the deterioration of the English language due to texting and chatspeak, because at work I have to deal with people who can't spell worth crud or put together coherent sentences, and talk 'ghetto'. McKay would be expending his efforts on a better cause if he tackled this issue rather than swear words. Or if he tackled the overall negativity of rap music, that'd be great too.
On top of that, he has proudly labeled himself 'The Most Cyberbullied Kid in the World' right there on the cover.
Great job, McKay. You might as well go ahead and paint a big red bulls' eye on your chest. Or face. I'll be happy to punch either. I mean, this kid had an ordinance passed in a town for no cussing, and recently he got into the news again when the TV show 'Modern Family' had a little kid say a bad word.
Only the bad word was beeped out, and during taping, the kid didn't actually say a bad word, she said 'fudge' and 'fudge' was beeped out, so it's not as if anyone was subjected to an actual bad word! The point of this episode was the parents dealing with their kid learning a bad word, something that parents in real life deal with. I will never forget my dad's reaction the first time I said a bad word. McKay completely missed the point of that episode and the lesson it was trying to convey, which is why his club (and this book) is such a danged terrible idea.