July
14Is Civility a Lost Cause?
It was about twenty years ago when I first had to face this knotty question: Will I fuck up the newspaper if I allow 'dirty' words to find their way into its pages?
The issue came to a head over a column I wrote about a character named Giancarlo Paretti, who was handed the presidency of MGM by the clueless French bankers at Credit Lyonnais. In my column I quoted Paretti’s explanation of his partnership with his production chief, Alan Ladd, Jr.
Said Paretti: “He make-a the deals and I fuck-a the girls.”
Syd Silverman, then in his final days as publisher of Variety, was the grandson of the founder and a Princeton man to the core, took issue with my use of the four-letter word. “This is Variety,” Silverman admonished. “We should protect our readers from potty language.”
“Variety readers have a right to know how Paretti talks.” I replied.
The various news media are still wrestling with this question, as shown last week by the confused handling of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s unguarded comments about Sen. Barack Obama. Jackson said he’d “like to cut his nuts off,” which sent some stuffy editors into paroxysms of self-protection, The word “nuts” was a no-no. The Washington Post said Jackson had suggested “that he wanted to castrate the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.” The New York Times couldn’t quote Jackson at all, but said he’s indulged in “critical and crude” language. The New York Post, to be sure, slapped the word “nuts” on page one in a huge headline.
The Times’ fear of the word “nuts” was bizarre in view of the fact that it put the word “cajones” in a headline ten years ago, as was pointed out by Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor of the Times. But then that newspaper has had growing difficulty in conforming to what its Manual of Style terms “taking a stand for civility in public discourse.”
Civility is a noble objective, unless the paper ignores those situations when the “discourse” becomes plainly “course”. When Dick Cheney tells Senator Leahy to go fuck himself, that deserves reporting. And when Rev. Jackson, one of the biggest free-loaders I’ve ever met, unloads on Obama, tender readers should not be protected.
Now as for Giancarlo Paretti, his working relationship with Alan Ladd Jr. worked fine for the moment, but the bank pulled the plug on him pretty quickly. He returned to Italy to pursue his self-defined avocation.
The issue came to a head over a column I wrote about a character named Giancarlo Paretti, who was handed the presidency of MGM by the clueless French bankers at Credit Lyonnais. In my column I quoted Paretti’s explanation of his partnership with his production chief, Alan Ladd, Jr.
Said Paretti: “He make-a the deals and I fuck-a the girls.”
Syd Silverman, then in his final days as publisher of Variety, was the grandson of the founder and a Princeton man to the core, took issue with my use of the four-letter word. “This is Variety,” Silverman admonished. “We should protect our readers from potty language.”
“Variety readers have a right to know how Paretti talks.” I replied.
The various news media are still wrestling with this question, as shown last week by the confused handling of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s unguarded comments about Sen. Barack Obama. Jackson said he’d “like to cut his nuts off,” which sent some stuffy editors into paroxysms of self-protection, The word “nuts” was a no-no. The Washington Post said Jackson had suggested “that he wanted to castrate the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.” The New York Times couldn’t quote Jackson at all, but said he’s indulged in “critical and crude” language. The New York Post, to be sure, slapped the word “nuts” on page one in a huge headline.The Times’ fear of the word “nuts” was bizarre in view of the fact that it put the word “cajones” in a headline ten years ago, as was pointed out by Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor of the Times. But then that newspaper has had growing difficulty in conforming to what its Manual of Style terms “taking a stand for civility in public discourse.”
Civility is a noble objective, unless the paper ignores those situations when the “discourse” becomes plainly “course”. When Dick Cheney tells Senator Leahy to go fuck himself, that deserves reporting. And when Rev. Jackson, one of the biggest free-loaders I’ve ever met, unloads on Obama, tender readers should not be protected.
Now as for Giancarlo Paretti, his working relationship with Alan Ladd Jr. worked fine for the moment, but the bank pulled the plug on him pretty quickly. He returned to Italy to pursue his self-defined avocation.
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Newspapers don't know what they're doing anymore. It use to be that they reported the news in the news section and their opinions in the editorial section, but now the line has been blurred and you have to reinterpret everything you read in the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
Particularly, with the New York Times, if you advertise yourself as being the newspaper of record, and a public figure makes that comment, for history's sake, you have a right to report that comment.
When I first heard about the Jesse Jackson comment, with the word bleeped out, I thought he had said something much cruder than what it really was. So that's one drawback of being politically correct.
One of the late night talk show hosts does a segment where he play harmless video clips, but his staff bleeps out some of the words so that your imagination is left to fill in the missing material. It's usually funny what the dark recesses of your mind can come up with.
In this case, using the word nuts is a lot lighter than the Washington Post's description of "wanting to castrate the Democratic Presidential candidate." And it's more accurate.
And it sends readers to have to seek out other media to find out what was really said. Newspapers should be trying to retain readers instead of censoring the news and driving them away.
Posted by: Dan Petitpas | 7/15/2008 9:39:00 AM
I was barred from using the term "bitch-slap" in a story when I worked in the Times building.
Posted by: secret | 7/15/2008 7:25:47 AM