I have been fascinated this week by the MSM squeamishness over broadcasting or publishing President Bush’s use of the word “shit†in a conversation picked up by an open microphone at the G-8 summit in Petrograd/Leningrad/St. Petersburg. Come on; what’s wrong with shit? I hear 5-year-old kids saying it at the mall but the nation’s premier news outlets feel compelled to print it as “s—t†or to say expletive deleted? What century are we in anyway. For most of the media, it was OK to publish shit on their web versions of the story, but most print products deleted the vulgarism.
For a good roundup of which media outlets gave us shit and which didn’t, go to Romanesko and its link to USA Today.
BTW, I'm not even going to address how ludicrous it is that Bush's use of the word shit is actually front-page, worldwide news. I just imagine some housewife somewhere remarking, "Oh fuck, the president said shit."
