NY Times Self-Censorship Watch, from this weekend's article on the Runaways:

The Runaways' classic hit from their four-year career is the 1976 jailbait anthem "Cherry Bomb"; the quintet's combative sexuality -- surprising for rock at the time -- seemed to both alienate and titillate audiences. Though they were talented musicians who helped write their songs and were ferocious live, they were often written off as a slutty, manufactured novelty act by the dude-dominated '70s rock press and heckled by male musicians, even those they appeared with. (Creem magazine infamously dismissed them with three unprintable words.)

Ooooo! The '70s! I bet it was REALLY dirty!

Well, Google should help me find out what they were ...

"These bitches suck"? That's it?

Only two unprintable words, not three. And only if you're a pussy.

10:21 AM :: Comments (4)

There's been plenty of discussion on this blog regarding how the contortions involved in media self-censorship often transform what would otherwise be a simple report involving the use of foul or abusive language into an impenetrable thicket of euphemisms that leaves the reader at a loss to understand what the hell actually happened and who would supposedly be offended.

Of course, sometimes the meaning is perfectly clear, as in this example from – you guessed it – The New York Times:

Otherwise it may take a practiced eye and ear to realize that a popular Anglo-Saxon expletive is acceptable in a PG-13 movie as long as it is only heard once and does not refer to a sexual act.

Short of rendering the word in question as f--k, its hard to see how A. O. Scott – or, more likely, his editors – could have been clearer about the word in question while still keeping the article suitable for a family paper. Well, unless he just wrote out fuck, since, as he just noted, even as prudish a body as the MPAA is okay with 13-year-olds hearing the word in a non-sexual context, and it's not like anyone under 13 (or 30) is going to read this article. [The one part of Scott's phrase that doesn't help to clarify anything is his reference to an "Anglo-Saxon expletive." Pace anyone who still says "pardon my French," all of the popular expletives come from the Germanic side of the language.]

But Scott does give us a clue as to why newspapers still engage in this charade:

It is easy to scoff at that rating only if you have never received angry letters from parents or grandparents appalled by profanity.

So journalists, like movie producers, keep their language clean not because they're worried about what children might hear or read, but because they're concerned about what adults might worry about what children might hear or read. Which means that until the members of a profession that claim to stand up to presidents and CEOs show their willingness to stand up to Grandpa Simpson, it looks like I'll have plenty of things to post here.

12:05 AM :: Comments (7)

Friends, it has come to this.

Eight months ago, as radosh.net began to creak into senescence, I explained why I'd do my best to keep it alive rather than pull the plug and make the leap to Twitter.

While that explanation reflected the best information available to me at the time, the statement, as they say, is no longer operative. Among the many ways in which my personal situation has changed since then, I now have even less time than before for blog-length posts, and, perhaps more importantly, I have a new outlet for the kinds of things I used to blog about.

All of which is to say you can now find me on Twitter under the handle @danielradosh. (Some Czech guy with the first name Rados is squatting on @radosh, though I hope to wheedle it away from him eventually).

That doesn't mean I'm shutting down radosh.net. I'll leave the lights on here as long as al in la wants to keep running the anti-caption contest -- and every now and then my new co-bloggers and I may weigh in on something or other. For the most part, though, Twitter will be my new home for Huckapoo, self-censorship and Why Not Bill Keane updates, as well as anything else that can be squeezed into 140 characters.

I'd like to figure out a way to feed a Twitter group of radosh.net approved folks to this site, if only so it doesn't feel too empty here -- like when New York City painted colorful curtains and flowerpots on the boards they used to cover the windows in abandoned buildings. If anyone with time on their hands wants to help me do that (and maybe some other blog housekeeping) I'd be happy to hear from you.

Be seeing you.

10:34 AM :: Comments (12)

This holiday season, all the kids are asking Santa the same thing: WHERER MY I HOP?

Yes, it's the game that's thousands of hours of fun for the whole family, available now in bookstores everywhere-ish.

Christ, evidently Rodney Bradford isn't the only black person not at this IHOP. The whole freaking town apparently exists in a dystopian alternate reality where Strom Thurmond won. Or possibly just a New Yorker cartoon.

2:17 PM :: Comments (0)

By now we're all too aware of newspapers hiding supposedly obscene words behind phrases like "barnyard epithet" and "salty language." But what to make of this New York Times story about a teenager who had the burglary charges against him dropped after proving that he'd been updating his Facebook status at the time?

The message on Rodney Bradford's Facebook page, posted at 11:49 a.m. on Oct. 17, asked where his pancakes were... At the time, the sentence, written in street slang, was just another navel-gazing, cryptic Facebook status update -- meaningless to anyone besides Mr. Bradford.

Unprintable street slang for "Where are my pancakes?" The original version of the story, on a Times blog, was even more cryptic.

At the time, the sentence, written in indecipherable street slang, was just another navel-gazing, cryptic Facebook status update -- words that were gobbledygook to anyone besides Mr. Bradford.

Fortunately, the Times web site posted a screengrab, allowing anyone to see that the actual post status update was "ON THE PHONE WITH THIS FAT CHICK......WHERER MY I HOP."

Alternate 1985 has some thoughts.

I'm not saying this is the most crystal-clear, easily understood expression imaginable, but "indecipherable street slang"? IHOP is a major chain with restaurants in all 50 states. Gimme a fuckin' break.

It's also funny--slash, troubling--that the Times translates "WHERER MY I HOP" as "Where's my pancakes" (as opposed to, say, "Where are my pancakes").The most innocent explanation is that the status update really was just completely incomprehensible to these people, and they couldn't even begin to understand that WHERER = WHERE'RE = WHERE ARE, and they either had to turn the R into an S in order to wrap their minds around it.

3:08 PM :: Comments (7)

The New York Times weird self-censorship - heavily documented over the years by Radosh.net 1.0 - goes international today, with an article about Mexicans' love of salty language.

The twist is that while the NYT's aversion to English-language swearing requires its writers avoid the actual word while describing it explicitly, the Mexico City bureau prints the vulgarities but declines to fully explain them. So while the Times will contort itself like David Blaine to avoid printing the word "fuck," there's chingar leaping out at us from page A8. The Times, being the Times, turns to the Royal Spanish Academy to inform us that chingar "is a derivative of the word 'to fight' but that in Mexico can be very offensive or very innocuous or virtually anything in between." "Anything in between" presumably includes its most common usage: to rape (though maybe 'force-fuck' would be more accurate; as in English, Spanish has a word for rape [violar] that is not itself a vulgarity). Chinga tu madre - "go rape your mother" - is something you would only say to someone you were prepared to fight to the death. Standards are a lot looser in Mexico, but sightings of chingar in respectable newspapers are still pretty rare.

Likewise, pinche:

One banner, a tame one, referred to Mr. Calderón as a "pinche ladrón," which can be translated as a "damn crook." Pinche, though, can also be a word with no negative connotation at all, meaning a cook's assistant.

Pinche can be translated as "damn," but is more commonly translated as "fucking." The Times doesn't even hint at this, but prints the word itself - a sight as jarring to a Mexican as "FUCKIN' YANKEES!" would have been on the front page of today's sports section.

And when Mexicans want to say "shit" - the exclamation, not the bodily excretion - they use a variant of chingar : chin. Nexis won't even calculate how many times the NYT has printed that one.

11:06 AM :: Comments (12)

"By taking the first letter of each line, beginning with the third line, two words emerge: The first is obscene; the second is 'you.'" - New York Times

"As in, a certain four-letter curse word, followed by its familiar friend 'you.'" - The edgy San Jose Mercury News

"However, a vertical reading of the first left-hand letter in each of the seven lines of the main body of the email suggests that the former Kindergarten Cop actor, who is due to leave office next year, was passing on an altogether less statesmanlike message. It reads: 'F-U-C-K-Y-O-U.'" - The Independent.

Well, at least newspapers in the UK aren't afraid to print the news. Indeed, the Independent went so far as to call out the US reporters for self-censorship. "The California governor yesterday found himself attempting to play down the revelation that a blunt email he sent to one of San Francisco's Democratic Assemblymen contained what US news bulletins have somewhat prudishly described as an 'X-rated rebuke'."

On a side note, many media outlets are grabbing onto the word "acrostic" in order to describe the positioning of the secret message, which is presumably because they all read each others' articles before writing their own.

The Governor's office is denying the message was intentional. I personally don't believe Arnold's message was meant to say "Fuck You". If you look at the letter more carefully, the real message is "I Fuck You", a somehow more obscene phrase which has its own implications.

12:34 PM :: Comments (6)

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with all the self-censorship that goes on in today's media. But it wasn't always thus. As Radosh.net Senior Lexicological Correspondent Jesse Sheidlower notes in a recent article for Slate, the New York Times – the Gray Lady herself, so fond these days of reminding us that it is a family newspaper – used to object to this kind of behavior:

In 1966, Jess Stein, the editor-in-chief of the major Random House Dictionary of the English Language, told the New York Times about a meeting he convened with the company's editorial and sales staff to discuss the words cunt and fuck. "When I uttered the words there was a shuffling of feet, and a wave of embarrassment went through the room," he said. "That convinced me the words did not belong in the dictionary, though I'm sure I'll be attacked as a prude for the decision."

Stein did not have to wait long to be proven right on the last point: A mere two weeks later, the Times' own book reviewer wrote, "Unfortunately, a stupid prudery has prevented the inclusion of probably the most widely-used word in the English language. The excuse here, no doubt, is 'good taste'; but in a dictionary of this scope and ambition the omission seems dumb and irresponsible."

Anyone care to spend $3.95 to see if the Times actually printed that "most widely-used word" in the original piece? Actually, don't. I'd rather hold onto the fantasy. Instead, read Sheidlower's article for some great info on the correct usage of terms like prong and irrumo, and then buy the updated edition of The F-Word. I haven't picked up the new one yet, but the original is one of the best books on language I've ever read (and, yes, I have read more than one).

(Disclaimer: Unlike this blog's originator/namesake, I've never actually met or corresponded with Jesse Sheidlower. I just appreciate a man dedicated enough to his job that he will track down the full usage history of phrases like "hotter than a fresh-fucked fox in a forest fire" and "you look like a monkey trying to fuck a football.")

1:36 PM :: Comments (8)

Deadspin gets in on the media self-censorship watchdogging with a particularly lovely item about a training routine whose name "cannot be mentioned in a family newspaper or on the Internet, but it has to do with, um, maturation."

I bet you didn't know there were words too outrageous for the Internet.

By the way, my NYT Mag piece on The Beatles: Rock Band originally included a special self-censorship wink for you, my blog followers, but unfortunately it was flagged and killed at the last possible second. A shadow of it remains, which I think you'll spot. Just know that the word "family" very nearly went to press as "uptight."

2:28 PM :: Comments (7)

A fan of our self-censorship series points out an interview with The Daily Show's Jason Jones in today's New York Times ArtsBeat blog that replaces the word fart with [flatulence]. The interview is pegged to a Daily Show segment about how the Times is a lumbering and increasingly irrelevant dinosaur of interest only to octogenarians, and while the policy of refusing to print the word fart didn't specifically come up, I can't imagine it helps.

Although in fact this might not be policy so much as an oppressive culture of self-censorship that has writers and editors cowed beyond even what's necessary. After all, it's not like the paper never prints the word fart. It first did so at least as far back as 1972 in an essay on Samuel Beckett that quotes a monologue by the playwright in which the word is used six times. For good measure, the author of the essay then repeats it twice more in his discussion of the work. Ironically, the headline on the essay is "As Close to Silence as a Man Can Get."

And just a couple of months ago, there it is again in another essay about Beckett, this time from one of his letters regarding "a sebaceous cyst in my anus, which happily a fart swept away before it became operable.” The writer did precede this quote with "brace yourself," for which some readers may actually be grateful, and which in any case is preferable to bleeping or paraphrasing.

I say fart appeared in the paper "at least" as far back as 1972 because the Times search engine returns more than 10,000 hits on the word fart, most due to misfires in what is apparently an automated process of rendering printed text into digital files. That is, most of the farts in the history of the paper have actually been parts, facts and forts. Sadly, therefore, the search engine is incorrect that the word appears in a World War One dispatch headlined Great Gas Attack by Foe.

But again, the Times has laid its share of intentional farts. William Grimes let one fly in a book review last December, as did Jim Holt last July. Virginia Heffernan squeaked one into the Magazine in February 08.

And those were in the more strict printed paper. Times bloggers cut the cheese even more regularly. Fart has been in the Wordplay blog, the Bats blog, the New Old Age blog, and even in a headline on the Freakanomics blog. On a related note, how many fucking blogs does the New York Times have?

Apparently the Times also gives more leeway to its non-original content, as when it posted the first chapter of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, with a whole opening paragraph about farts. I've never read the book, but all of a sudden the title makes a lot more sense. Also, the paper's movie listings reprint an AMG review of the 2000 comedy F.A.R.T., although apparently the film (I can't believe you don't remember it) was also released under the title Big Wind on Campus, which is how the NYT officially catalogs it.

And it is in this area that the paper's overseers may wish there were some more oversight. Because it turns out that if you know what to search for — say, the 1974 Belgian softcore comedy Erotic Diary of a Lumberjack (an old Skinemax staple, SFW) — you can find trailers (NSFW) featuring not just a couple of naughty words like fart but simulated sex and full-frontal nudity. Next time you see a demure refusal to print an "obscene" word on the web site of the family newspaper, you can have a chuckle at the knowledge that this is only a click away on the same site.

1:17 PM :: Comments (10)

Does media self-censorship sound more sophisticated with a British accent? A reader alerts me to this humorous decorum from Metro.co.uk.

Apprentice loser Ben: I was a k**b: "Fired Apprentice loser Ben Clarke... conceded he was a 'bit of a k**b' after making a string of enemies on the show following nine weeks."

In a related matter, here are some web sites 14-year-old British boys find absolutely hilarious:

Knob Gallery

Nice Knobs!

MyKnobs.com

Top Knobs USA

Knobs4Less.com

Bob's Knobs

House of Knobs

Blue Knob

Knobs N Knockers

4:25 PM :: Comments (6)

The AP indulges in some fancy footwork -- I guess you could call it self-censorship -- in its efforts to explain why Adam Lambert maybe didn't win last night's little talent competition.

There was also the Danny Gokey factor. Gokey made it to the top three before he fell out of the contest, leaving his supporters up for grabs. "After the third one leaves, you wonder where do the votes go from that third contestant," Paula Abdul said backstage after Tuesday's singing showdown.

Allen seemed the likely candidate for those viewers' affections, for on- and offstage reasons. Allen and Gokey, 29, of Milwaukee, were downright conservative when compared to Lambert's elaborate staging and wardrobe choices. Allen is a married college student — his wife was often on hand to root for him — and has worked as a church worship leader. Gokey, a recent widower, is a church music director.

Lambert, 27, of Los Angeles, brought measured rock flashiness — daring, not freaky — with songs including "Whole Lotta Love," the first-ever Led Zeppelin tune on "Idol." He's largely kept his personal life under wraps, saying "I know who I am" when asked about it.

Earlier this week, Allen said he hoped the outcome wouldn't be decided by "having the Christian vote."

"I hope it has to do with your talent and the performance that you give and the package that you have. It's not about religion and all that kind of stuff," he said.

That's funny, the gays also think it has to do with the package that you have. Anyway, from now on when someone is half-closeted, I'm going to call it the Danny Gokey factor.

This contorted effort to come close to explaining something without actually doing so has as much in common with journalism as American Idol performances have with music. It doesn't even seem necessary. One could avoid "outing" Lambert by reporting not that he's gay but that people voted against him because they think he is. And if the AP really believes that enough people watching the family-friendly American Idol are aware that Lambert is or might be gay for it to influence the outcome of the voting, then surely reporting that in an article about the show would not be revealing something that people don't already know. Indeed, the allusive explanation of the "Danny Gokey factor" only makes sense if people know what it means. It's unnecessarily coy for those who get it and unacceptably non-explanatory for those who don't.

I should say that I don't in the least care who won. I don't watch the show myself and have never heard either of these gentleman sing until today when I watched a bunch of clips out of curiosity. I get that the appeal of the program is the game show aspect and not necessarily the performances, but holy crap the performances suck. Yes, several previous Idolers have gone on to make great pop music, but I'd rather file my ears off than watch the show itself. Any program that actually rewards someone for doing this to a Bob Dylan isn't going to get me on board. (Take that, Fox!)

10:06 AM :: Comments (5)

As comedy, this Onion article falls apart quickly, despite a strong opening.

In recognition of her groundbreaking work treating life-threatening diseases of the privates, renowned hoo-ha specialist Dr. Victoria Lazoff was awarded the Nobel Prize in Lady Medicine this week.

However it ends with a lesson to newspapers everywhere about how preposterous their self-censorship efforts sound to normal adult readers.

"We should be encouraging an open dialogue with our young women, one that isn't constrained by some outdated facade of 1950s morality," Lazoff said to a crowd of people looking down at their shoes. "I cannot say this clearly enough: Ladies, please, make an appointment to get your annual [looksie-doo], especially if you are [seeing a fella] or have experienced pain or sensitivity in your ['Hello, my baby! Hello, my darling! Hello, my ragtime gal!']."

Added Lazoff, "It is time for this country to begin having a frank discussion about the [sound of loud, extended train whistle]."

9:39 AM :: Comments (2)

From the Northwest Florida Daily News. Emphasis on self-censorship mine, of course.

An Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office deputy patrolling an area known for prostitution and narcotic sales stopped a car driven by an elderly white male on March 25.

There was a middle-aged female in the passenger seat.

The driver, who was 77, said he was driving down Lovejoy Road when the woman flagged him down and used a slang term to offer to give him oral sex for $30, according to her arrest report. The driver said he was not sure what she meant so he asked her to clarify. She used a different slang term. He declined, according to the report.

So what is the hip term for rolling cigars among septuagenarians? Other questions raised by astute Daily News readers: If he declined, why was she driving around in the car with him? Why was he pulled over, or is driving in a "known" prostitution area probable cause these days? And, of course, why is she charging $30 when everyone knows the going rate is $10. It's a shame when people prey on the elderly like that.

[h/t: Charles]

12:49 PM :: Comments (4)

Last week, the New York Times had an authentically amusing article about the poor folks who live in British towns and streets with obscene-sounding names. Names like Crotch Crescent, Wetwang, Slutshole Lane, and Titty Ho.

Many of the names, the article notes, are found in the books Rude Britain and Rude UK, "which list arguably offensive place names — some so arguably offensive that, unfortunately, they cannot be printed here."

Yeah, you knew self-censorship was going to come into play here. And no one familiar with media prudishness would expect the Times -- even in an article that's entirely devoted to crude humor -- to print names like Cocknmouth, Shitterton or Twatt. (Though since Slutshole made the cut, a determined writer could surely have challenged prohibitions to Sandy Balls, Fingring Hoe, Rimswell, and Funbag Drive.)

What's odd, as Eric Nelson pointed out to me, is that this apologetic moment of decorum comes shortly after the following passage:

Several months ago, Lewes District Council in East Sussex tried to address the problem of inadvertent place-name titillation by saying that “street names which could give offense” would no longer be allowed on new roads.

“Avoid aesthetically unsuitable names,” like Gaswork Road, the council decreed. Also, avoid “names capable of deliberate misinterpretation,” like Hoare Road, Typple Avenue, Quare Street and Corfe Close.

(What is wrong with Corfe Close, you might ask? The guidelines mention the hypothetical residents of No. 4, with their unfortunate hypothetical address, “4 Corfe Close.” To find the naughty meaning, you have to repeat the first two words rapidly many times, preferably in the presence of your fifth-grade classmates.)

It's really mind-boggling. The newspaper can hold your hand and guide you inexorably to the words fuck off, but it can't actually print the words themselves. Because children might be reading. Except the paper then acknowledges that 10-year-olds not only already know these words, but are more likely than adults to conjure them given the slightest excuse.

On a related note, my memory is a bit hazy, but I'm pretty sure that back in 1999 or 2000 I was one of the first cybernauts to discover and propagate this. I was so juvenile then.

9:58 AM :: Comments (4)

In addition to the previously established (and established and established) problems with media self-censorship, William Safire's language column today points out that the words newspapers use interchangeably to substitute for the words they don't want to print are not actually interchangeable at all.

Personally I'd like to do away with the deceptively passive "unprintable." Just because a publication chooses not to print a word doesn't mean the press is going to break down if it tries.

2:44 PM :: Comments (8)

LA Times blogger Andrew Malcolm does his best to take on media self-censorship in a self-censored medium.

If some guy shouts "U-o%$#@-!" at a candidate's rally, print reporters can't write "U-o%$#@-!"

They must type something like, "He shouted an eight-letter barnyard epithet." Even then some wussy $#&*/=@ editor will likely delete that. How $#&*/=@ quaint!

Now, these fg9##$6_+ television reporters have another #g\g';[0 problem. They can't substitute stupid symbols for bad words on-air. They have to use one of those %%&*^/+@ bleeps...

Who are we $#&*/=@ kidding here? You know =)&%9\ well what every one of these $#&*/=@ euphemisms means. Even if we mix up the symbols in each &#$-*@/ phrase, you can @/-$&#* figure it out.

Same on the (bleeping) TV bleeps. It's a royal pain in the bleeping %$*. We don't even allow )%-$ in the Comments section here because that would be $#&*/=@ rude.

9:19 AM :: Comments (5)

You know self-censorship has gotten out of hand when even Lindsay Lohan feels the need to protect the sensibilities of her MySpace friends. In a sure indication that bowdlerizing "offensive" words has become nothing but a mindless reflex, La Lohan writes that tabloid reporters making up stories about her fights with Sam Ronson "must really feel silly, embarrassed, out of stories, scr*w*d, f*ck*d, punk'd, and so much more."

Really? Firecrotch can't bring herself to say "screwed"? Or "punked"? Next she's going to be graffitiing bathrooms with the message that "Scarlett is a bloody N-word for women."

To make the whole thing crazier, Lohan actually directed her comments at "the people that make shit up." Not, that is, "the people who make sh*t" up.

But maybe "shit" is more acceptable than "screwed." Even the Washington Post Celebritology blog flirted with it today, approvingly reprinting the following as one of its comments of the week: "I'd like to see a Shatner-hosted home improvement show called 'Who Shat In My House?'"

Who indeed?

[h/t: J]

1:26 PM :: Comments (5)

The Smoking Gun:

Meet Bridget Clemons. The 19-year-old Floridian, an employee at a Pensacola strip club, is facing an assault rap after confronting a shoe store employee she accused of calling her the N-word for women (four letter, rhymes with bunt).

Bonus: Keep reading, and there's the actual word on the first page of the police report. At least the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office doesn't resort to self-censorship.

[h/t Tim Moraca]

10:22 PM :: Comments (5)

When the New York Times headline is Avery Punished for Vulgar Remark, you don't have to know who Avery is to know that reading the article will in no way inform you what the vulgar remark was.

True to self-censorship form, the newspaper of record-ish will say only that hockey star Sean Avery "used a derogatory term to refer to his former girlfriends, saying that it had 'become like a common thing in the N.H.L. for guys to fall in love with' them."

So what unprintable term did Avery call Elisha Cuthbert et al? Bitches? Hos? Cunts? Chicks?

Nope. Thanks to less scrupulous tabloids (and YouTube), I learned that what Avery actually said was, "I just want to comment on how it's become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds. I don't know what that's about. Enjoy the game tonight."

Enjoy the game! Such a polite Canadian!

The wire services split on this one, with UPI daring to actually report the most relevant detail of the story and AP opting to protect the delicate sensitivities of hockey fans. Guess whose lead most papers followed?

As far as I can tell, the Times has only used the offending phrase twice and never about a person (once incorrectly in a food article and once in a review of what sounds like an alarmingly bad gay comedy, Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds. Why they printed the full title is anybody's guess). The phrase has gotten the media in some trouble in the past, but not everyone is so demure. Us Weekly used it to describe Ashlee Simpson.

[h/t: Colby Cosh]

10:17 AM :: Comments (8)