I know newspapers like to “protect” readers from “coarse” language (i.e. language real-life people actually speak in their real lives), but I had no idea that you couldn’t say “nuts” (i.e. “balls”, e.g. “Those are balls”) in the newspaper.
Well, apparently you can’t! Even if Jesse Jackson says he wants to “cut [Barack Obama’s] nuts off”! At least not if you’re the New York Times.
Jeffrey Goldberg says what needs to be said:
What we have then is a story about a controversy concerning Jesse Jackson’s words that refuses to print the most relevant word. Even though I’m a member of the MSM, I sometimes see why people might go elsewhere for news. At least bloggers believe that their readers are emotionally equipped to handle the presence of the word “nuts” in a sentence.
Gawker has a fun roundup of previous words the Times has avoided, and wonders if there are any “examples of the Times censoring ‘doody’ or ‘wiener’.”
I see that the Washington Post also avoided the horrible word. Kudos to the L.A. Times for having the balls to print “nuts.”
(Incidentally, I’m glad to see that the Barry Louis Polisar song that inspired this post’s title is available for download at Amazon’s MP3 store.)
Korr Values 