With great clarity I remember my mother coming at me with a bar of Sweetheart soap in her hand. I swore (the words of an 8-year-old are immaterial) and she heard it. There would be consequences. Although the actual moment during which she drew the bar across the bottom portion of my upper front teeth is lost, I do recall the flakes of soap melting into suds on my tongue.
I learned this: Do not, under any circumstances, use that word again in front of mom or any adult for that matter. The experience also curbed my use of foul language in public. Over the years, however, my dogs have heard some interesting combinations of hyphenated oaths.
That said, let us move to the topic of using taboo words in a daily newspaper.
A taboo word is one not usually used in polite society. Adults and most teens can run through this list of words in their heads. Basically, they are the same words that you cannot say on network TV; Comedian George Carlin developed a comedy rant about them decades ago.
But they are words most parents do not want their children using or reading at least until the youngsters have the emotional and intellectual ability to deal with them.
There is one word that creeps into the mainstream media with increasing frequency; I will not write it out. Suffice it to say: This word tripping off the lips of a 6-year-old boy taught me never to try to rhyme the word “duck” when I was a first grade teacher.
In a story last Saturday by sports writer Phil Miller, the only acceptable substitute for the word appeared three times in a quote from Karl Malone, Mailman for the Utah Jazz. (The exact quote was “I threw the ball all over the f—ing gym, f—ing threw it around like it was a f—ing bomb.”)
Of course I got calls from 20 parents. And those complaint calls led me to think about why this would have appeared in the Sports section.
The copy-editing supplement used by editors at The Salt Lake Tribune cautions about use of [rhymes with duck] in any form: “Avoid using this word, even if it is in a direct quote. If is in a direct quote, use f—.”
I can recall in my years at The Tribune vigorous discussion when reporters or editors proposed using the hyphenated the word in a story. There is no official policy on using the hyphenated word. The four-letter word itself cannot be used raw. That means each use of f—- is supposed to be subject to debate.
Explaining why he used the direct quote in his story, Miller said:
“It’s very unusual for Malone to swear like that after a game. Karl’s very good with watching what he says in front of the media. … This sentence was illustrative of how angry he was.”
That is a good explanation for using the quote and it is too bad that was not spelled out in the story. Anyone who goes to Jazz games or watches them, on TV knows that Malone and almost everyone else in the NBA uses taboo words on the court during play.
Use of the quote needs an explanation, especially if it is in a quote from a professional player; members of NFL and NBA teams can use that word in every form including adverbial. Now, if someone like the Pope used it in public, there would be little or no debate about reporting it. That person’s use of the word would be news, because it would be considered out of character.
Miller said he filed the story just before deadline and that no one on the Trib’s sports desk called him to ask about it.
That’s a problem.
Editors at The Tribune know that many children read the Sports section. And, most parents do not believe they should have to censor the daily newspaper before their youngsters read it. In any story where representations of such words are used then, it should be apparent why they are there.
If Miller’s story had an explanatory sentence, such as “It is rare for the Mailman to curse in front of the media, so his words indicate how mad he was at himself,” parents may have been better able to deal with the quote.
The secondary problem is this: The Salt Lake Tribune, like hundreds of other daily newspapers puts copies of the paper in Utah classrooms every day through its Newspaper in Education program. I would be hard pressed to defend this use of Malone’s quote had many of those copies gone into classrooms. Thank the furies that few schools get copies of Saturday editions of The Tribune.
