Media What He Said…
posted by on November 16 at 14:45 PM
…sounds a lot like what I’ve been saying. Daniel Politi at Slate on the Washington Post’s lady-like refusal to print the word “bitch”:
The WP’s Eugene Robinson writes about the now-famous incident where Sen. John McCain was asked at a campaign event, “How do we beat the bitch?” Except he can’t write the word “bitch” because, even though it’s regular fodder for prime-time programming, it’s “a word that most editors won’t print in a family newspaper.” Doesn’t this extreme puritanism surrounding “naughty words” ultimately just seem condescending to readers? And, just for the record, the Post has published the word several times, and the the NYT doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.
Slate, of course, is owned by those timid bitches at the Washington Post—and Slate was recently called out for bleeping profanities on their podcasts.
Speaking of b*****s, it's my birthday today!
Happy Bitch, you birthday boy!
Yay for Saggitariuseses!
Not quite. I'm a Scorpio. But yay!
There's an urban legend about Johnny Carson once having a professional dog trainer/expert (maybe Lassie's owner or something) on the Tonight Show. Johnny deliberately used the word bitch several times during the segment because that is the technically correct reference to a female dog. He knew the NBC censors couldn't bleep it out since he was using the word in this sense.
Sometimes bleeped cuss words can be funnier, but I'm all for making that an artistic choice rather than blanket censorship.
Yeah but the sanitizing of what public people for the sake of not offending the public is just nuts. Fortunately, these days most folks have access to find out just what expletives or slurs people actually used. That hasn't always been the case.
Thirty some years ago, Nixon's agriculture secretary Earl Butz rattled off a truly demented sentence that he ended up resigning over.
In the aftermath, Rolling Stone did a great article on how not a single major network or newspaper reported what Butz actually said. Instead they chose sterile euphemisms to explain what he said. The result was that very few folks were reacting to what Butz said, but to a media filter that said it was bad.
NYT may use the word "bitch" (give'em a medal), but they still are trotting out that old wives' tale (see last line of their story):
"At the same time, the episode may remind voters that many people have strong feelings about Mrs. Clinton and make them question whether they want to live with animosity and polarization."
WTF? The problem with Clinton is that she's not polarizing *enough*. If we was a little more innovative or inspiring, rather than a bland centrist, than that statement could be true. However, if the NYT wants to credit the evangelist whackos out there as "many people" than that says more about them than Clinton.
Well, all I can say is that dried up old hag that asked the question shouldn't be calling anyone names. There's not enough KY in the world to moisten up something like that. No wonder she's so bitter.
This is really odd, considering the mild profanity that peppers the WP VP's hilarious and insightful presenations.
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