Laced and laden

Of all the ways in which Rashida Tlaib's lone Very Naughty Word has been transformed into a basketful, the Freep's "expletive-studded" (at right) looks like it's farthest from the mark. Here's the OED on "studded":

Containing a number of objects or features placed or occurring at intervals. Chiefly with modifying word: strewn or punctuated with a specified object or feature.

Since one motherfucking sparrow doth not strew a summer, no. Somebody wasn't paying attention.

Points to the Freep, though, for calling out a Trump lie:

"I think she dishonored herself and she dishonored her family, using language like that in front of her son and whoever else was there. I thought it was highly disrespectful."

Tlaib's office didn't respond to Trump's remarks, though it confirmed that neither of her son,* who are 13 and 7, were present at the event when she made the comments. 

"Laced" and "laden" seem to be much more common misinterpretations:

 

The NYT's print hed has less space, but the text manages to get "exuberant, expletive-laden" above the fold:

And full marks to the Times for printing the Magic Word itself:

Broadly, I'm inclined to put "expletive-laden" in that category of terms that journalists reach for automatically, whether or not they've looked closely enough to see if the thing they're getting breathless over actually happened: like "limped into port," to borrow one of the Magic Phrases of Journalism, or anything having to do with bluegrass, anywhere. For the record, here's what an "expletive-laden rant" looked like to Fox last weekend:

Cardi defended Patientce in a since-deleted Instagram video (via In Touch), telling her followers, "That’s my b—h, that's my homegirl, and matter [of] fact, I am mad at Patientce. Wanna know why I'm mad at Patientce? Cause she should've spit in that f–king lady's face. That's why. So don't f—king tell me about my b—h, that's my b—h. And she's been doing a great f–king job and I thank her every single f–king day. Thank you."

"Laden," of course, means "loaded"; the two examples in the Merriam-Webster usage dictionary use noncount nouns ("wisdom" and "disquiet"), but they're pretty clearly in nontrace amounts. "Laced" is a bit trickier; I think of "rum-laced" as "LOADS AND LOADS of rum," but I suppose I could see a case in which "laced coffee" might be just a drop or two. Still, editors and writers would do well to avoid reaching into the cliche bag here; it's careless, sure, but it's the kind of carelessness that's hard to distinguish from stereotyping. If you aren't prepared to demonstrate that Rashida Tlaib has a lower lading capacity than your standard white Protestant college football coach, might as well not stick a paper clip in that particular light socket.

* This might be a War on Editing first: the typo is in the online version, but not in print.

Locker-room talk

See if you can guess what has the party press on the fainting couch this morning:

Freshman U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib wasted no time in calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump just hours after being sworn in.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters Thursday night, the Michigan Democrat and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress said of Trump: "People love you and you win. And when your son looks at you and says, 'Momma, look you won. Bullies don't win.' And I said, 'Baby, they don't, because we’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the mother***er.'”*

Perhaps the snowflakes should calm down a bit. If you were writing a set of rules for coding political speech,** it'd be hard not to count that as "locker-room talk" -- though admittedly more like a rookie who had doubled twice, singled and stolen a base in the first game of the Series than like an old con artist after a golf game. And it does seem a bit late in the going to get all huffy about locker-room talk. Maybe Rep. Tlaib should try changing the subject?

You know, when we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have — and, frankly, drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over, where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven’t seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world.

And they look and they see. Can you imagine the people that are, frankly, doing so well against us with ISIS? And they look at our country and they see what’s going on.

Yes, I’m very embarrassed by it. I hate it. But it’s locker room talk, and it’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. We’re going to defeat ISIS. ISIS happened a number of years ago in a vacuum that was left because of bad judgment. And I will tell you, I will take care of ISIS.

So no, "unveiled" probably wasn't an accident either.

There are some cool subroutines of news practice going on in Fox's follow-up:

"Profanity," of course, would be something like asking God to damn the head of state. And how one "motherfucker" makes a statement "profanity-laced" -- apparently that's just another Magic Phrase of Journalism.

The fear knob certainly has been dialed up to 11 the past couple days at Fox. Here's the lead story from Thursday around 7 a.m.:

 And from 11:25:

And from 1:45:

So the question for the audience at year's end was: Is Fox scared of girls? The answer seems to be that Fox is scared of almost everything, but it's flat-out terrified of girls.

* Could you at least count the motherfucking asterisks, please?

** There's still space in that Tuesday night content analysis course, kids!

Man eatin' tiger

Dear New York Post: If you must make junior-high-level puns on people's names, and if you must commit your g-droppin', and if you must refer to your candidates by given name on second reference -- would you at least be so kind as to provide the hyphen that lets us distinguish a Scotsman eating blancmange from a Scotsman-eating blancmange?

Thank you.
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Those pesky taboos

You can't help but think the Nation's Newspaper of Record could have avoided this one if it hadn't insisted on being so f***ing coy:

An article on June 6 about the Bushwick Open Studios event in Brooklyn misinterpreted a statement by the artist Juniper Alcorn in the process of paraphrasing it to eliminate an obscenity. Ms. Alcorn says that the vulgarity in her manifesto means that she is a feminist who messes around, not that she “sleeps around.”  

Here's the corrected version of the paragraph in question:

One of the other artists, Juniper Alcorn, then directed the visitor’s attention to a hall where her art hung, two monochromatic canvases centering on athletic socks thickly encrusted with paint.  And Ms. Alcorn — whose bracing artist’s statement explained in essence (using bawdier language) that “Juniper Alcorn is a feminist and messes around accordingly” — said, “The work is Abstract Expressionism meets feminist arts-and-crafts.” 

Aside from the bit about putting quotes around (in essence) a paraphrase, maybe the desk should have had a bit more of a talk with this writer about the many virtues of Our Naughty Words.

Let's go to the videotape on that!

Today's quiz: How did you read "Major ____ de Coverly" when Catch-22 first swam into your ken?

Being, oh, 14 or 15 at the time, I saw and (mentally) heard "Major F*cking de Coverly." I have no idea if that's what the author intended, but that seemed (and still seems) to reflect basic common sense about Those Naughty Words: They go where the f*cking blank space is, not somewhere else.

Thus one can only hope that the tender eyes of the children and horses were averted when Coach Ryan took to the practice field for the events that produced this column.

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