Now it's Moustafa Kemal Ataturk being teased with playground insults. When Ann Coulter taunted John Edwards, the Washington Post primly refused to print the word "faggot" (Howard Kurtz, "The Long Fuse on Ann Coulter's Bomb", 3/6/2007):
At the end of her speech Friday, Coulter said: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word [expletive], so I'm kind of at an impasse.
But a Turkish court is so freaked out over a net-based back-and-forth between childish nationalists of various types over (as far as I know invented) assertions on youtube that Ataturk was gay (or, alternatively, that Ataturk was a great leader while Greeks are gay; or, alternatively...), that it has ordered a ban on access to youtube. Meanwhile, youtube seems to have removed most of the "Ataturk is gay" clips, while leaving a couple of hundred "Ataturk is not gay" responses in place, which would presumably be somewhat unsatisfying for offended Turks, if they could access youtube.
Posted by Mark Liberman at March 7, 2007 04:42 PM