George Washington High School teacher Carlos Garcia denies he ever used the word “cunt,” in Spanish or otherwise, when students in his history class refused to “behave and listen to instruction,” he says in court papers filed today. But even if he had, does that word really merit a $15,000 fine? Garcia wants the court to ponder this, for purely academic purposes
For instance, for all they know, he could have been using it in the friendly way Scots like Ewan McGregor bandy it about. Or he may have been making a reference to James Joyce’s description of the Dead Sea in Ulysses, or to the sundry variations of the word as penned by Chaucer. The question is, is it really necessary to fine a man for using a word that predates the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England? There. Now we’ve all learned a lesson.
