MEMO FROM THE EDITOR
MEMO from the Editor Four-letter Words William Safire, whose observations on language for The New York Times Magazine are generally more interesting (and always more persuasive) than his...
...Fortunately, I won the argument...
...For one thing, I'm not sure what terms are "relatively inoffensive," and I suspect it depends on the reader and how eager he or she is to take offense...
...We want readers to appreciate the ideas presented in this magazine without being confounded by the way they are presented...
...I read the piece with particular interest because the issue has been raised lately by a few of The Progressive's subscribers...
...We prefer standard spelling and orthodox syntax...
...Or is it okay to quote the colorful language of a President or a music star, but wrong to write exactly what a cop or a coal miner said...
...So if a few subscribers are offended every once in a while by a word or a phrase that appears in The Progressive, we're sincerely sorry—but not sorry enough to want to deprive the rest of the readers of an accurate and faithful presentation of what someone said...
...In an article headed "The Guatemala Connection" (May 1986 issue), Allan Nairn revealed that the Reagan Administration had sent covert military assistance to the Guatemalan dictatorship at a time when such aid was banned by Congress...
...I find Safire's formulation less than satisfactory for The Progressive, though it may be fine for The Times...
...For readers who want to help The Progressive, one way is to send contributions earmarked for prisoners' subscriptions...
...We try to convey our information, our analysis, our opinion as clearly as we can...
...To me, bladder-voiding is repellent...
...The prisoner, confined for three years and with another year to go, says other inmates would be interested in seeing the magazine, and promises to pass his copies on...
...Certainly not...
...Sources also said that with covert U.S...
...In a recent account of covert operations approved by President Reagan, Alfonso Chardy of The Miami Herald reported: "Reagan's 1981 Presidential directive authorizing creation of the Nicaraguan con-tras to interdict weapons flowing from Cuba to Nicaragua to leftist guerrillas in El Salvador was expanded in 1982 to include Guatemala, according to a 1982 NSC document...
...Frank Zappa, interviewed in the November 1986 issue of this magazine, offended some readers with his casual use of four-letter words...
...M-41 tanks shipped by way of Belgium...
...Some have been convicted of acts of resistance against war and weaponry...
...Safire, whose "laws" of language usage are not necessarily obeyed by The Times's copy editors, offered this rule: "Slang terms describing bodily functions that can understandably be denoted with standard words should be avoided when possible, but not when such avoidance becomes labored or ludicrous...
...Like other forms of financial support for this magazine, such contributions are tax-deductible...
...Should we have scrubbed his answers before publishing the interview...
...From a Federal prison camp in California comes a request for a complimentary subscription to The Progressive...
...And we won't resort to fatuous euphemisms of the bladder-voiding sort...
...Like other details of Nairn's article, the tank transaction was emphatically denied by U.S...
...Is Zappa "responsible and directly quotable...
...This charge is absolutely without foundation," wrote Richard H. Melton, director of the State Department's Office of Central American Affairs...
...Molly Ivins, writing last month about President Reagan's claim that his purpose in peddling arms to Iran was to end the war between Iran and Iraq, recalled one of the great graffiti of the Vietnam war: "Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity...
...The State Department, I assume, will issue the usual denial...
...It would have been too bad if I'd had to quote LBJ as saying, "Never get into a bladder-voiding match...
...Should we have exercised retroactive censorship of that twenty-year-old bit of wisdom...
...Around the country, several dozen prisoners receive free copies of this magazine...
...MEMO from the Editor Four-letter Words William Safire, whose observations on language for The New York Times Magazine are generally more interesting (and always more persuasive) than his political disquisitions for the daily Times's op-ed page, wrote on a recent Sunday about a question most editors must wrestle with from time to time: What words—if any—are simply too nasty to put into print...
...Among the specifics Nairn mentioned were ten U.S...
...M-41 tanks to Guatemala in 1982...
...Should we have eliminated the marvelously apt analogy from Ivins's column...
...We won't engage in coy evasions—dashes, for example, to denote the missing letters of a d—y w-d...
...officials...
...One unhappy reader wrote, for example, that Molly Ivins, in her Small Favors column, "used expressions I found crude, rude, pertaining to the gutter—not the sort of thing I am proud to have on my coffee table...
...Safire pegged his discussion to a complaint from John Irving, the novelist, who wrote a book review for The Times and was dismayed by the bowdlerization to which it was subjected...
...Twenty years ago, I got into a vigorous discussion with an editor who objected when I tried to quote—accurately—one of the favorite adages of the President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson: "Never get into a pissing-match with a polecat...
...Although authors of the stature of John Irving are cited in dictionaries to illustrate the development and acceptance of words, the following was published in the Book Review section of The Times: 'The wild journey that only Cecil and Margaret manage to finish ends outside the tent of a trader who's famous for winning bladder-voiding competitions.'" In his protest to Safire, Irving pointed out that the word he had used in his review was peeing, which he described as a "totally inoffensive word— a euphemism, in fact, for pissing, a perfectly good English word...
...We assume that The Progressive's readers are grown-ups who don't need or want a sugar-coated magazine—even if they're going to keep it on the coffee table...
...For another, I don't know what Safire means by "a responsible and directly quotable news source...
...The Progressive, as most readers have observed, is not particularly adventurous when it comes to usage...
...There are times when it's important to use precisely the right word...
...also, when relatively inoffensive slang terms are used by a responsible and directly quotable news source, such terms may be used in context within quotation marks...
...approval, a Belgian company shipped ten U.S...
...Much ado about nothing...
...I don't think so...
...Administration sources said the program mainly involved covert training of the Guatemalan armed forces and intelligence sharing...
...The book was Seven Rivers West, by Edward Hoagland, in which a character is known for his prowess in long-distance urinating...
...This is Safire's account: "The reviewer felt it important to refer to the character and his talent...
...We'll enter a complimentary subscription, of course...
Vol. 51 • February 1987 • No. 2
