The reaction on both sides of the Atlantic has proved the point that you can't be flippant with abusive language and then just try to brush it off as part of a culture you know nothing about.
Amy*, who has depression, tells me that, "I often use the language in quite a flippant way because I find that irreverence takes away its secret power".
When he was attacked in the past for poor grasp of detail during his eight-year stint as mayor of London, he saw fit to respond with such flippant putdowns as "blah blah fishcakes" – hardly suitable language for Britain's representative on the world stage.
For Gray, its principal achievement lies in the way it confuses categories, using language to be simultaneously serious and flippant, delicate and coarse, and mixing up "abstract neo-philosophy and figurative phraseology".
Even a seemingly jaded journalist for an English-language daily, who earlier made a flippant remark about knowing as much about Gaga as she knew about him, appeared spellbound.
Her words may have been mildly flippant, but her point could not have been more serious.
It is, for example, the only language this blogger knows that has a sense of national pride.I'm not being flippant.
Asked whether he and Michel had become inappropriately close, Smith said: "I think the tone of some of the language I may have used in some of the texts in hindsight was a bit too flippant and loose certainly but I don't think the substance of what we've been through was inappropriate".
After being criticized for her flippant tone, Tolentino apologized for including Jess's Instagram handle and face in the post, but defended her language.
