The bull watch
For some time now we've been watching the media -- in particular,
National Public Radio and the
New
York Times -- cope with two books with "bullshit" in their
titles (
On Bullshit and
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City),
here,
here,
and
here.
The
Times has settled on
"bull––" (but with a 4-em dash instead of two 2-em dashes) as its cleaned-up version, and in this Sunday's
Magazine (10/22/06), in a brief
interview (p. 29) with philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt (the author of
On Bullshit and a new book
On Truth), Deborah Solomon
absolutely revels in this substitute: eleven occurrences in fifteen
short exchanges between Solomon and Frankfurt. Four of the
exchanges are about Frankfurt's childhood, meaning that there's one
occurrence of "bull––" for each of the exchanges where the word
"bullshit" might conceivably be relevant.
This is amazingly ostentatious avoidance. You have to wonder who
the paper thinks it's protecting with its avoidance tactic, while it
waves a transparent allusion to the word in front of the reader every
whipstitch.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at October 23, 2006 07:05 PM