"short-sided" (was: Re: More surprising censorship)

[Wilson Gray]

What, technically, is "blending"? Back in the day, a friend of ours
was under the impression that the once well-known brand-name, "Richard
_Hud_nut" was "Richard _Hug_nut," interpretable as "Hug_testicle_." We
laughed with him, till we realized that he was serious, at which point
we laughed *at* him. Did he _blend_ "Hudnut" with "hug" to get
"Hugnut"?

-Wilson

On 8/13/07, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      "short-sided" (was: Re: More surprising censorship)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 12:16 AM -0400 8/12/07, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> >On 8/11/07, Chris F Waigl <chris at lascribe.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>  Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> >>  >
> >>  > On Aug 11, 2007, at 8:05 AM, Ron Butters wrote:
> >>  >
> >>  >> Surely this ["may c**k their collective heads in dismay"] is just a
> >>  >> joke.
> >>  >
> >>  > not necessarily.  when i looked at the iTunes automatic asterisking
> >>  > scheme a year ago, *all* occurrences of "cock" (in song and album
> >>  > titles) were translated to "c**k", and automatic asterisking turns up
> >>  > on other websites.
> >>
> >>  Even more mindless: "c*m sancto spiritu" and the like.
> >
> >The sports blog Deadspin has often ridiculed the censorship of user
> >comments on ESPN.com, e.g.:
> >
> >http://deadspin.com/sports/espn/man-that-commenting-feature-is-totally--235084.php
> >http://deadspin.com/sports/espn/espn-turns-douche-into--252920.php
> >
> >Earlier today there was a post about similar censorship on
> >FoxSports.com, where "BLEEP" is inserted in place of offending words:
> >
> >http://deadspin.com/sports/whatever-happened-to-sterling-hitchbleep/fox-sports-protects-us-from-the-horrors-of-boof-288512.php
> >
> >Referencing censored bits here:
> >
> >http://community.foxsports.com/blogs/Morisato/2006/07/13/The_Worst_Trades_In_Baseball_History
> >
> >"The San Francisco Giants trade pitchers Joe Nathan, Francisco
> >Liriano, and BLEEP  Bonser to Twins for A.J. Pierzynski." [censoring
> >"Boof" Bonser]
> >
>
> Note that this one (besides the "potty-mouth" reference to Boof...er,
> BLEEP Bonser) also sports a lovely eggcorn; one of the "worst trades
> of all time" was the Tigers trading the future first-ballot Hall of
> Fame starter/closer John Smoltz to the Braves in 1987 for the briefly
> competent Doyle Alexander, characterized by the blogger as "a
> short-sided trade" on Detroit's part, nicely tossing "short-sighted"
> and "one-sided" into the Osterizer and pressing "BLEND".
>
> (This one is Language-Logged by Mark Liberman at
> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002324.html
> [posted, as it happens, on the day I turned 60], but the cites Mark
> records don't have the two-way understanding present above, where
> "one-sided" is clearly a component, given the nature of the blog.)
>
> LH
>
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>


--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
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-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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