USA Today on "sucks "

[MiRobin Webster]

Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:25:50 EDT, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>What has always been interesting to me is that SUCK occurs in so many other
>>expressions, including pejorative ones, in which no one ever thinks of
>>fellatio--so why do they often think of the connection in the environment,
>>"Yankees Suck"?
>
>
> As with other heated sports rivalries, the discourse of the Yankees/Red
> Sox rivalry often alludes to imagery of sexual domination/humiliation. Cf.
> last year's taunt, "Who's your daddy?"
>
> --Ben Zimmer

I haven't seen -- though I haven't yet searched any tomes, Brewer's and
Oxford and so forth -- any pejorative sense of "suck" that didn't seem
(to me) to be reasonably related to fellatio and homophobia. I don't
claim to have seen the fellative connection documented either, mind you;
it just "seems obvious", if you'll allow my intuition its say here.

In general Anglophonic culture, you know:
homosexuality is bad, homosexual acts are bad, fellatio is bad, sucking
is bad, whatever sucks is bad.

After all, sucking as such is archetypally good in human experience;
none of us would be alive today if we hadn't sucked early and often. And
sucking on thumbs and lollies and mints -- and eggs, for that matter --
most all the nonfellative sucking I can think of is tasty, nutritious,
or otherwise gratifying. (Not to imply otherwise of fellative.) So why
do only bad people or things suck, in the idiomatic usage? What
etymological, lingua-cultural force is strong enough to overcome so much
good association with sucking, from birth on, that it is categorically
bad for someone or something to "suck"?

I haven't seen and, so far, can not think of, any other force in our
culture powerful enough to sway the innate categorical goodness of
sucking, other than homophobia. Which, I've heard, is very powerful.

But steer me to good sources that say otherwise, and I'll attend with an
open mind.

~MiRobin Webster
Webster Editing