more taboo avoidance

[victor steinbok]

I'm not sure how much interest there might be in this, but there are some
potentially attention-worthy elements in the story of an 18-year old drunk
(no longer) US Olympic skier arrested after an incident on a JetBlue flight.
There seems to be a dichotomy between the more formal traditional media (and
their websites') reports of "urinating" and the bloggers comments on
"peeing", while the guy's own explanation involved "pissing".

I also had a question concerning the MSNBC headline:

http://goo.gl/KwCYN
Olympic dreams dashed after unfortunate in-flight incident

I am not sure whether to characterize this as an unfortunate
misinterpretation of events or their attempt to give the kid the benefit of
a doubt. My own stylistic gremlins would not allow me to use "dreams dashed"
in this context, as this would have implied external or independent (random)
agency--being beaten by someone else (including losses due to own admitted
mistakes /during the competition/), accidental injury, unusual
circumstances, parental action, etc. But, in this case, being kicked off the
team is a direct product of the skier's own asinine behavior (drunk or
not)--basically, if it's your own fault, your dreams can't be "dashed" (in
my writing style). What I am trying to figure out is whether it's my own
predilections or some kind of received rule or some kind of frequency
analysis. In fact, in this particular headline, as an editor, I would not
have used "unfortunate" either, because it also suggests a random act or an
external agent.

VS-)

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