01x04 - d*ck

[bunniefuu]

[Sarah Silverman] When it's time to make

your voice heard, there's only one choice.

Only one strong enough and big enough

for our country's future.

d*ck.

d*ck isn't afraid to go hard.

And where

others fall short, d*ck goes long.

d*ck gets it done.

[echoing] d*ck is everywhere.

You can trust d*ck,

because d*ck is in all of us.

[man 1] I'm a d*ck.

[man 2] I'm a d*ck.

[woman 1] I'm a d*ck.

[woman 2] I'm a d*ck.

[child] I'm a huge d*ck.

[group] We're all Dicks.

[Sarah Silverman] So when the time comes,

don't d*ck around.

Vote d*ck.

I'm Nicolas Cage,

and I approve this message.

[bleep]

[cat meows]

Oh.

And now we've come

to another f*cking episode

in our compendium of cuss words.

And this one is unique.

It is the only one

that started out as a first name.

Nobody ever named

their firstborn "Shittered" or "f*ck."

"Excuse me. Excuse me. f*ck,

have you done your homework?"

"Shittered, inside voice, please."

Only "d*ck" holds this distinction.

It comes from a name.

And that name is Richard.

But why Richard?

Why not Jeffrey?

"Hey, you! Suck my jeff."

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

What about Daniel?

"Suck my dan" See? No.

Oh, I know. "Suck my nick."

Yeah.

"Hey, nickhead, eat a nick."

"Don't even think

about nicking me over, nickwad.

Yeah, you wish

you had B.N.E, Big Nick Energy."

I could get used to that.

But until I can make

"nick" happen, we're stuck with "d*ck."

A word that has had four different

meanings over the past 500 years.

But what is it

about this word that makes it so…

ubiquitous? [sighs]

[typing]

d*ck?

- d*ck.

- Big ol' d*ck!

Can you tell me a d*ck joke?

I used to suck d*ck for coke.

Now make yourself one, d*ck weed.

It reduces everybody to a 12-year-old.

Say "d*ck" or "p*ssy" and people…

"d*ck" is funny. It's sort of the same

structure as the word "f*ck."

"d*ck" has great phonetics.

Just like a lot of other swear words.

"d*ck" is short. It's punchy.

You d*ck!

"d*ck" sounds exactly

like a swear word in English should sound.

You can almost make it multi-syllabic.

Dey-uck.

d*ck-uh!

Di-i-ickkk.

I would say my

my own use of the word "d*ck"…

uh…

besides…

intimate exchanges in

in the bedroom with my wife,

like, "Honey, are you interested in…

conducting business

tonight with this d*ck?"

"Hey, Megan, have…

you seen my d*ck lately?"

[laughs]

"You should check it out.

There's been some developments."

There's not that immediate, like,

taboo thing that happens

when you say "f*ck" or "sh*t"

or "a*s" or any of those other words.

Because "d*ck," like, you do have to have

that, like, moment of pause

where you're like,

"Okay, am I talking about

the… the body part?

Am I calling someone an as*h*le?

Or am I just referring to my Uncle d*ck?"

[typing]

"Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo."

This is one

of my favorite lines of classical poetry

from one of ancient Rome's

most beautiful writers, Catullus.

It roughly translates to "I will butt-f*ck

you and make you suck my d*ck."

"d*ck" has been used in art

and literature for thousands of years.

So the use of

of the d*ck as a sexual tool

and words around the d*ck as a sexual tool

have always really been taboo.

[woman] When archaeologists

were excavating Pompeii,

they found the city awash with dicks,

in the graffiti, in the sculpture…

There were dicks everywhere.

So when the archaeologists

removed the dicks,

they put them in

what was called a secret museum,

or a secret cabinet.

Can you imagine a museum that's just

filled with all of these stolen dicks

that were chiseled off of statues?

I think it's beautiful that this museum,

like many households across America,

has a cabinet full of dicks, you know?

Personally, I have a

drawer next to the bed, not a cabinet.

Um…

A Ziploc bag full of dicks.

Not as classy as the museum's, probably.

But it's a pretty impressive collection.

[typing]

We know for sure that "d*ck"

started as a nickname for "Richard."

How "Richard" became a nickname

for "junk," is a little more obscure.

So the original naming of "d*ck" was

it was a nickname for "Richard."

Like a lot of names in early England,

there was a lot of rhyming with nicknames.

[Nick Offerman] In the late 1500s,

we get all the English rhyming nicknames.

"Robert" becomes "Rob," then "Bob."

"Margaret" becomes "Meg," then "Peg."

And "Richard" becomes "Rick," then "d*ck."

Every single person

called d*ck is a white guy.

You will never meet

a Black guy called d*ck.

Factual. Does not exist.

You lot can have that.

We can dance. [chuckles]

You lot get d*ck.

And that's it. [laughs]

So it's a nickname for "Richard"

and then it became

used as just a term for "guy."

Like, "Any Tom, d*ck and Harry."

Like, "Hey, guy," "Hey, dude."

It's like saying "dude."

Then it gains this interesting meaning.

It refers to a riding whip.

Uh, a riding crop.

And especially

the handle of a riding crop.

During the sexually-repressed,

tightly-corseted Victorian era,

people must've been clamoring

for things to call penises.

In theory, someone went,

"Riding crops,

oh, riding crops look like penises.

And we call riding crops 'dicks, '

so let's call penises 'dicks.'"

It's just too bad

they never called riding crops "nicks."

"d*ck" is a word that really symbolizes

the strength

and the playfulness of the male genitalia.

My favorite word for p*nis is "dong,"

because it can almost be

like an onomatopoeia, you know?

Like, it suggests sound in a certain way,

sort of just like dong, dong.

- Willy.

- The Package.

My snake eye.

Flesh banana.

Johnson.

- Meat wand.

- Prick.

Skin flute.

Tallywhacker.

Lightsaber. [chuckles]

- Tackle.

- The National Treasure.

Choad.

- Your lunch box.

- Pud.

Peggy Sue.

- Tockleys.

- Gravy Spigot.

Eww.

I believe that's all of them.

It only took

a decade or so for "d*ck" to go from

the name of the kid you shot marbles with

to a double entendre that made us blush.

How?

We've been able to track it changing

from a word that was a nickname,

that described someone named Richard,

and then acquiring this profane meaning

where it refers to the male member.

But it can also be, uh, just

a denigrating term for people in general.

It's kind of like "as*h*le."

And now no one

would call their baby boy "d*ck,"

for fear of being misconstrued.

Very slowly,

this new meaning starts to take over

to the point where, by the 1960s or 1970s,

people aren't calling

themselves d*ck anymore.

There are lots of Richards

and lots of Ricks.

But if you know a d*ck, he's

probably in his seventies or eighties.

I don't think d*ck will

ever go back to being a nickname.

It's hard for words, once they become a

swear word or have a negative association,

it's hard to go back.

In the '60s and '70s,

swearing norms were

being challenged everywhere.

But in America, it was also

the era of tricky d*ck Nixon.

Tricky d*ck.

That's one of the times it really started

to take hold in the culture.

Just hearing

the word "d*ck" like that,

because it was his nickname

and a perfect descriptor, I mean,

that is the essence

of who Richard Nixon is.

He's "d*ck."

Richard Nixon, like,

he is king of all Dicks,

in many senses of that phrase.

"d*ck" is used to describe a person

who is unpleasant,

or… does antisocial things.

Like, I can annoy

someone with my p*nis, certainly.

Um…

In a myriad of ways, it's…

uh, was one of the special skills

on my résumé, right after tennis.

I think we call people

we don't like "dicks"

because dicks are

famously sort of unseemly.

Like little sand worms

comin' ofrom ut your pants.

We don't like that guy.

What's the ugliest thing I can think of?

My p*nis.

Nixon was hated by the very population

that wanted to make

swearing more acceptable.

Much like a "d*ck," Nixon kept

popping up in places he didn't need to be,

like Vietnam.

As we moved into the more progressive

Gen-X political climate

of the late 1980s and '90s,

the word was strengthened

and became a tool for political change.

- [crowd cheering]

- [Sarah Silverman] The year was 1990.

New Hampshire, USA.

A man named d*ck Swett decides

he wants to run for Congress.

His opponent, Meldrim Thomson Jr.

Meldrim complains to the ballot law

commission that Mr. Swett

should appear as his name is listed

in the phone book, Richard Lantos-Swett.

The assumption being, of course,

that idiots will think it's funny

- to vote for a guy named d*ck Swett.

- [laughs]

The claim was denied.

But Meldrim might have had a point,

because on election day,

d*ck Swett won.

I think it's a beautiful comeback story

for someone who was probably tortured

for their name for their entire life,

and then finally had it come back and

and win them an election.

Because let's be honest,

nobody knew the issues in that race.

Nobody was paying attention to what

party affiliation d*ck Swett was in.

They saw the words "d*ck Swett,"

and they're like, "Hell, yeah."

Playing with this ambiguity gets harder

as the word's profanity level gets higher,

until we hit peak "d*ck" in the second

half of the 20th century.

So "d*ck" is still at the vanguard

of censorship battles.

"d*ck" is unique because it comes

at its origin from a name.

That's very different

from other profanity.

It's special in that context matters

in a way it doesn't matter for "f*ck."

There's no one named "f*ck"

you could possibly be referring to.

There is a sporting goods place

named d*ck's Sporting Goods.

What were you thinking,

naming a sports shop that?

I would be very awkward going there

as a child to get, like, a new volleyball.

We've got a dessert

in, uh, Britain called "spotted d*ck."

- That looks nothing like my spotted d*ck.

- [woman] Uh, right!

[man laughs]

They're now going

to call it, uh, "spotted Richard."

It's really nice.

[Nicolas] Let's not forget

a favorite pastime. d*ck jokes.

Because the word "d*ck"

makes people giggle so much…

People wanna say

it's double entendre. It's just entendre.

It's not hiding from anything.

It's not like you're going, "Oh, I wonder

whatever 'd*ck' can be ascribed to."

You know what they're talking about.

About somebody's d*ck.

When you see it in these ways,

it's just people having their cake

and dicking around with it too.

I think every comic has a d*ck joke.

I don't like eating bananas in public.

That is so stressful

if you're a girl, like…

It's so annoying, 'cause it's

such a portable, good snack, you know?

But, like, if you're a girl

and you wanna eat a banana on the bus,

or wherever you may be… [laughs]

…all of a sudden, you're in the position

of like, "How do I de-d*ck this?"

[laughter]

I was primarily, for the first sort of

eight years of my career, just d*ck jokes.

It doesn't matter, you know,

how old you are,

you can still relate

to a good old-fashioned d*ck joke.

And I'll tell you somethin'

about the d*ck jokes.

It's like the rock and roll music, right?

It goes away for a while, and they say

it's dead but then it always comes back.

In a stand-up act,

you can do a few good d*ck jokes,

but they are really hard

to keep up for 15 minutes,

a lot like…

d*ck.

I'll never forget

the one time I saw my dad's p*nis.

[laughter]

I said, "Dad…

don't text me sh*t like that."

[laughter]

Patton Oswalt has a great joke

about the fact that the word "d*ck"

is censored on TV

if you're talking about a p*nis,

but if you're talking

about a guy being rude,

you can say, "He's a d*ck"

and it won't get censored.

But if you're talking

about your p*nis being a jerk,

you can say, "My d*ck is a d*ck"

and on TV it will say,

"My bleep is a d*ck."

We have this thing around language

and words we're not allowed to use.

We wanna say them more.

We wanna say them all the time.

When you tell us not to use them,

forget about it.

It's our favorite word of the week.

[Nicolas] However, the greatest example

of "d*ck" in the mainstream

came in 2006, with this SNL digital short.

All the fellas out there

With ladies to impress ♪

It's easy to do

Just follow these steps ♪

- One ♪

- Cut a hole in a box ♪

- Two ♪

- Put your junk in that box ♪

- Three ♪

- Make her open the box ♪

And that's the way you do it ♪

It's my [bleep] in a box ♪

Saturday Night Live, as a phenomenon,

has always been about pushing boundaries.

And so, why not "d*ck in a Box"?

"d*ck in the Box" was

a fascinating cultural moment

because it really spoke to

the idea that men think

that their dicks are gifts to women.

It's really a silly thing. Men think

that all the time, in fact.

The box is a gift attached to them, and

they're like, "d*ck in a box!" You know?

And it's really funny,

because "d*ck in a Box"…

They couldn't even say it on television.

They win the Emmy and they can't even say

the name of the skit that wins the Emmy.

And that's how transgressive it is.

Just saying "d*ck"

isn't patently offensive.

Seeing d*ck, on the other hand…

When you see a d*ck on screen, like…

full-frontal nudity from a guy,

it's like, "Oh, my God."

I'm gonna sign these t*tties, so sit back

and watch how it's done, my friend.

I'm gonna get Oh, sh*t! Oh! It's a d*ck!

I love it. Every time I see 'Cause I

I'm so fascinated by them.

It's so much more exciting

than seeing a bush.

It's exciting to go back

and watch it in slow motion,

and rewind it over and over

and pause it and study it.

The visual culture of Hollywood is

participating in this

double standard in our culture,

whereby dicks are seen

as okay and more acceptable

when vulvas aren't yet,

but female nudity is over-represented,

compared to both.

I'm that person

watching a sex scene like this,

trying to see if there's a little bulge.

And if there is, I'm happy.

If there's not, then it's not real.

It's fictional. You've ruined everything.

You've ruined television for me. [laughs]

Remember in middle school when

every single teen boy was

obsessed with drawing phalluses?

Why did we do that?

When we see a car

with a light dusting of snow,

why is our first instinct to sketch

a p*nis on that pure white carpet?

Why did I just draw this?

I'll tell you, out of all the swear words,

"d*ck" is the easiest to draw.

It's the only one that has its own logo.

None of the other ones you can draw

on the back of your school bag,

on someone else, and put

a little piss coming out of it.

Or come, whatever you will.

There's no question that the word

and the image make us laugh.

But don't be fooled.

This seemingly silly swear word

still holds a dark power.

I don't wanna

d*ck-shame anyone,

but dicks get everyone

into a lot of trouble.

[typing]

[Nicolas] What's with d*ck pics?

[London] d*ck pics.

I hate 'em. [gags]

"d*ck pics" sounds

a lot like a swear word.

It's got the d*ck in there,

of course, but then,

it's built from two words

that sound very similar,

that have all those consonants in them.

It rhymes. It makes it seem

like the type of thing

that people might remember and repeat.

I haven't sent a d*ck pic in…

I would say 15 years was my last d*ck pic.

I sh**t out d*ck pics

with reckless abandon.

Several of them have been leaked.

The reviews were good, so I left 'em up.

We need consent if we're

going to have a a just sexual culture.

And there is a rule for your d*ck pics.

Just don't send them without asking.

I was looking on Craigslist

for a… a cleaning person

and I was opening all these ads and

someone was like,

"I clean everything, blah, blah, blah."

And I open the ad and it was just a

it was a massive d*ck pic. [laughs]

And I thought it was just so funny.

It was just so unexpected.

But I I take it that most women

I'm married so I don't know,

but I take it that most women

do not appreciate them.

There's the old joke,

"Why do men name their penises?

They don't want a stranger

making decisions for them."

[Nicolas] How do you reference your p*nis?

Nicknames for penises are…

lame.

But I get it.

It's cute, it's fun.

I don't I've never dated anyone

that has had a nickname for their d*ck.

Wait. Wait, wait. Hold on.

What do I think about nick What?

Wait. There are people out there

who don't nickname their d*ck?

I call my… my d*ck, uh, "Little Elvis,"

'cause I've got

some shaft hairs on the side,

and it looks like sideburns.

Every time I have sex with a guy,

I nickname their d*ck.

I've called 'em "Bruce."

I've called one "Penelope."

I saw a d*ck, it definitely looked like

a Penelope. It was very dainty and pink.

I have never nicknamed my p*nis.

Um, it has never done anything for me

that would warrant a fun nickname.

It's only gotten me into trouble.

So, no. You don't get a nickname.

You've done well, my friend.

I was actually just talking about you.

I am so proud

of all we've accomplished together.

We've been through hell too. [sighs]

There were a few times there I…

I thought I might lose you.

But you always, always came.

Do you mind?

I'm FaceTiming with my accountant.

Did you think [sighs]

Naughty, naughty, naughty.

"d*ck" is such a satisfying thing to say.

It's a satisfying thing to say,

and a satisfying thing to get.

d*ck, d*ck, d*ck. Nick, nick, nick, nick.

I think it was just fun to say.

I mean, penises are pretty special.

Uh… not to say that they're more special

than anything else, but they are…

in fact, used in this

relatively important act

that continues

to preserve the species' existence.

So I guess you could forgive

a little bit of obsession with them.

This is what I think

about the whole thing.

You can say what you want

about the d*ck, right?

But we all

They've stood the test of time.

We've been using statues of penises

and different phallic things.

We all like d*ck in one form or another.

We may not like

the people they're attached to.

In fact, most people don't.

But the actual object

of the p*nis is a winner.

My name is d*ck

And I am awesome ♪

Everybody loves me ♪

Because I am awesome

My name is d*ck ♪

And I'm really, really awesome ♪

- He's really awesome, yeah ♪

- Uh-huh, my name is d*ck ♪

And I am awesome ♪

Oh, yes, my name is d*ck

And I'm awesome ♪

Back me up, backup singers ♪

Yeah, yeah, yeah! ♪

He's really awesome, yeah ♪