[Ads-l] The Mooch and print journalism

[Jonathan Lighter]

> now allows its writers to use the emphatic "fuck"/"fucking".

In editorials too?

JL

On Sat, Jul 29, 2017 at 2:27 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>
wrote:

> As I recall, during the Cheney administration, Dick Cheney told someone to
> go fuck himself.  the NYTimes printed it in full, and responded to a
> complaint by saying that the words of the president-behind-the-throne had
> said was the news story and it could not properly be reported without
> quoting them.
> Meanwhile, TLS (the Times Literary Supplement), a sister publication to the
> [London] Times, the original Gray Lady, now allows its writers to use the
> emphatic "fuck"/"fucking".  Mind you, that Times is now owned by Rupert
> Murdock.
>
> GAT
>
> On Sat, Jul 29, 2017 at 2:14 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > On the topic of The Mooch:
> >
> > Interesting moment in the history of the F-word and related
> > asteriskabilia...
> >
> > As many of you have no doubt noticed, The Mooch’s rant (first of what we
> > can hope will be many) has led to the Decency Drawbridge being
> > significantly lowered by the Gray Lady and other news sources.  Am I
> right
> > in thinking this was the first (or one of the first) instances in which
> the
> > Times has printed “fucking” in so many letters? (Jesse will know.) Not to
> > mention the bit where The Mooch maintains that he, unlike Bannon, isn’t
> > “trying to suck [his] own cock”.  Note this article in today’s print
> > version reflecting on the issue:
> >
> > =====================
> > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/business/scaramuccis-
> > vulgar-rant-spurs-newsroom-debate-asterisks-or-no-asterisks.html
> >
> >
> > […]
> > At The New York Times, editors had a lengthy, raucous discussion about
> > which obscenities to include, and how many. Dean Baquet, the executive
> > editor of The Times, made the final decision.
> >
> > “We concluded that it was newsworthy that a top Trump aide used such
> > language,” Cliff Levy, a deputy managing editor at The Times, wrote on
> > Twitter. “And we didn’t want our readers to have to search elsewhere to
> > find out what Scaramucci said.”
> >
> > Still, the publication of so many expletives and vulgarities, while
> deemed
> > newsworthy, may have baffled any reader accustomed to The Times of yore.
> >
> > “There is no question in my mind that in recent years, we have been more
> > open to considering exceptions in a range of cases,” Phil Corbett, the
> > standards editor for The Times, said. “Fifteen years ago, we almost never
> > would have made exceptions like this.”
> >
> > One Times policy has remained intact: after publishing vulgar language
> and
> > obscenities in an article, the paper rarely repeats them in subsequent
> > ones. And, thus, this story.
> > =================
> >
> > —That is, Ember’s article itself avoids all such terms, referring instead
> > to "an F and G with asterisks between" and “C-blocking”.  But while that
> > may be the Times’ policy, it apparently can be relaxed for columnists, as
> > seen in this op-ed by Bret Stephens in the same issue, which spells
> > everything out in full (sixth and seventh paragraphs down):
> >
> > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/opinion/trump-vulgarity-
> > scaramucci-conservatives.html
> >
> > LH
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998.
>
> But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
> your lowly tomb. . .
> L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112
>
> The Trump of Doom -- affectionately (of course) also known as The Dunghill
> Toadstool.  (Here's a picture of one.)
> http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-
> gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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