Jesse S. et al. v. Antonin S. et al. on fleeting expletives

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 03:26:15AM -0400, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:00 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > At 5/3/2009 10:41 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> > >http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/opinion/03freedman.html

This wasn't a fresh interview; the comment was taken from an
interview I did with the WSJ a few months ago, where I called
the FCC's position not only "rubbish" but "absolute rubbish":

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122575539538895001.html

> > I am amused that Adam Freedman writes "That the justices managed to
> > do this without actually uttering either of the words at issue ..."
> > -- but manages himself to evade even an initialism by writing "Jesse
> > Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary and the
> > author of a book on swearing ..."!
>
> The Associated Press ran a poll a few years ago about profanity, and
> the accompanying article included this line: "For the record, we
> needed special dispensation from our bosses just to say 'F-word.'"

In general that's the policy of the NYT as well, despite the
fact that (until recently) the NYT was the location of the
first known appearance of the expression "the F-word". Every
time this issue has come up with me, they've either not used
the phrase or needed to get special permission to do so.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org