A Brit on American Puritanism

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Matthew Engel: Their very own Taliban The US was a Victorian country even by the time Victoria came to the throne, as Captain Frederick Marryat, author of Mr Midshipman Easy, discovered when he visited Niagara Falls in 1837 and a young lady knocked her shin. "Did you hurt your leg much?" he asked. She was horrified by the use of the vile word "leg". The 1830 and 40s, according to Mencken, were the golden age of American euphemism. "Bitch, ram, boar, stallion, buck and sow virtually disappeared from the written language, and even mare was looked upon as rather racy."

Maybe this is a new golden age. Most British visitors are fooled because they watch minority cable TV programmes like South Park or The Sopranos or go to licentious enclaves like New York or San Francisco and imagine these somehow constitute America. If I have tried to say anything in a year of writing from here, it is that there is a vast hinterland where life is very different.

The values of the hinterland permeate the cultural life of the country. Politicians might talk of assholes in what they think is private - Nixon swore all the time, we know - but public discourse is sanitised to suit the values of a churchgoing nation. The CBS late-night host, David Letterman, is still barred from mentioning, as he tried to explain on air, the word "bull-[bleep].