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A big pussy. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)
The New York Times is famously prudish when it comes to printing obscenities.
As Jesse Sheidlower notes today in a Times opinion piece, which makes a convincing case for “profanity in print,” the paper is lousy with “unprintable name”s—though it’s softened a bit in recent years, allowing, for instance, the name of Russian punk band Pussy Riot to appear in its pages.
But just because the Grey Lady will now print “Pussy Riot” doesn’t mean the word “pussy” always gets a pass. We couldn’t help remembering, as we read Mr. Sheidlower’s piece, that the Times opted, in a recent concert review, for an “unprintable name” instead of publishing the band’s real name: Perfect Pussy. Wouldn’t it have been more informative—and consistent—if the name had just been printed? What’s the Times’s pussy policy?
We put this question to Times standards editor Phil Corbett.
“I would not describe it as inconsistency; we are making case-by-case judgments, based on newsworthiness, context and other factors,” Mr. Corbett wrote in an email. “In the case of Pussy Riot, it involved a major international news story and the name was reported ubiquitously. It would have been impractical and probably counterproductive to try to avoid the name.”
“On the other hand,” he added, “a brief reference to one obscure band is a different situation. Plenty of bands these days choose names in part for shock value, and we don’t necessarily feel obligated to print them.”
Fair enough. The inclination to not “feel obligated” to print a band’s seemingly shocking name, though, has made for some unexpectedly funny outcomes, as writers have worked their way around the Times’s enforced censorship. Kelefah Sanneh, a former music critic for the paper, wrote what may be the best Times-ian circumlocution in a 2007 review of the punk band Fucked Up. “[T]he name won’t be printed in these pages,” Mr. Sanneh wrote, “not unless an American president, or someone similar, says it by mistake.”
While we give credit to the Times for publishing Mr. Sheidlower’s op-ed, which is basically a critique of its editorial standards, we can’t help wondering if the name Perfect Pussy is really that provocative.
For what it’s worth, the Times has been printing the word pussy since 1855, when the word mainly denoted a cat, according to a search of its archives. “[W]hat after all is pussy but a soft, lazy, luxurious animal,” the Times wrote in an 1860 article, which unflatteringly compares women to cats. (Other instances of pussy in the Times include “pussy willow” and Pussy Galore, the fictional Goldfinger seductress.)
By not allowing the publication of certain illicit words, the Times and other publications add to the illicit aura of those words. “Profanity reminds us of our capacity to be shocked,” Hua Hsu wrote in a 2008 Slate piece, “even if our sensitivity to language has dulled over time.” By the same token, “unprintable names” remind us of what we’re missing, exciting our interest.
And so we are assuming that the Times would have a hard time reporting on this interesting news: The word ”cunt lapper” and a slew of other “cunt”-related words were added to the Oxford English Dictionary in March. This is important news for lexophiles, and the Times is missing out on the fun.
Speaking of which, what’s the Times’s “cunt” policy?
Image may be NSFW.
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