SUCK a taboo words in the NYT?

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:50 AM -0400 10/18/04, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>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.

And a few more thousand t-shirts are on sale every day during
baseball season--especially this week--around Fenway Park in Boston
on which the same intransitive verb takes a subject denoting a
certain baseball team from the Bronx.

larry