"Gee" is not fit to print?

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   An interesting story about that New York City newspaper that tried to 
prevent the liberation of Iraq and never published a story on "the Big 
Apple," from www.andrewsullivan.com:
   
  
BEING EDITED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES: An old friend, Boris Johnson, whom I 
remember as a young turk in the Oxford Union, is now a very grand personage 
in British culture. He's a Tory MP and editor of the Spectator, one of the 
house organs of London's chattering conservative classes. So I was thrilled 
to see him turn up on the New York Times' op-ed page last Sunday, with a 
peppy, funny piece about Mr Tony Blair. Yesterday, in the Spectator, however, 
he unloaded on the experience of <A HREF="http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old&section=current&issue=2003-03-22&id=2907">being edited</A> under the p.c. auspices of 43rd 
Street. A quip about throwing money at the president of Guinea had to be 
changed to the president of Chile. Why? "Uh, Boris," said Tobin, the editor 
of his piece, "it's just easier in principle if we don't say anything 
deprecatory about a black African country, and since Guinea and Chile are 
both members of the UN Security Council, and since it doesn't affect your 
point, we would like to say Chile." Tom Wolfe couldn't make this stuff up. 
Then there was the problem of Boris' lead sentence, which was a sarcastic 
reference to Donald Rumsfeld's ham-fisted dis of the British military effort 
in Iraq. The piece began: "Gee, thanks, guys." After some too-ing and 
fro-ing, Tobin 
> revealed the true concerns of his multitudinous line-editors and 
> page-editors. ‘OK, Booris, I’ll tell you what the problem is. Our problem 
> is that “Gee” is an abbreviation for Jesus. For a century this has been a 
> Jewish-owned paper, and we have to be extremely sensitive about anything 
> that might offend Christian sensibilities. ‘We can say “God”, “God” is 
> fine, but we have to be very careful about anything that involves the name 
> of the Lord and Saviour.’ ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ I said, ‘this is insane. 
> This is utterly insane.'
No it isn't, old chum. It's the New York Times.