Blushing in 1915

[Mark Mandel]

Is "blushing" in this sense your coinage? Whencever, I think it's a good
one, and useful.

m a m

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 10:07 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> George,
>
> How much blushing -- that is, use of asterisks or dashes -- was there
> in newspapers of the first decades of the twentieth century?  (I do
> see it frequently enough in 18th-century newspapers, although not
> merely for taboo words but also in personal names with the presumed
> motive of avoiding libel action.)
>
> Joel
>
> At 9/15/2010 09:41 AM, George Thompson wrote:
> >It's true that as long as we research "jazz" by searching databases,
> >we won't find newspapers that were ashamed to print the word -- but
> >it will take someone finding a newspaper reference to "the ****
> >band" or "the j--- band" or to "that vulgar music with the vulgar
> >name" to convince me that "jazz" was a word originally associated
> >with sex.  Even newspaper reports that denounce jazz music as
> >immoral and associating it with indecent dancing print the word in
> >full, without blushes.  (It's true that blushes on a newspaper page
> >don't come through well on microfilm.)  There's a story from a New
> >Orleans paper of 1917 or 18 saying that the word and music arose in
> >the brothels of our city, but it prints "jazz", no blushes.
>
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>

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