SUCK a taboo words in the NYT?

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 9/22/04 12:55:42 PM, zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU writes:


> the NYT Book Review of 9/19/04 (p. 18) had to cope with the title of
> Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir, and opted
> for two kinds of ellipsis:
>    Another Bull _ _ _ _ Night . . .
> 
> [i didn't understand the second ellipsis, taking the ellipsis dots to
> be part of the title.  but a google search showed me my error.]
> 
Is Arnold suggesting that SUCK is (or is not) a "taboo word"? I guess it is 
for some people under certain circumstances--the way that STINK used to be in 
the 1950s? And there is ample evidence tht its use can--or at least has--got 
kids kicked out of junior high school (at least it did in one egregious case in 
the 1980s).

On the other hand, IT SUCKS TO BE ME is the refrain in a song in a hit 
Broadway show, AVENUE Q; one can also buy t-shirts at the theatre with that slogan. 
Of course, one can also buy t-shirts saying FCUK (and any number of 
"vulgarisms," for that matter, and AVENUE Q is also advertised as not suitble for 
children under 12 (though I suspect that SUCK has little to do with that, 
considering that a couple of the puppets engage in onstage copulation and oral sex).