The Washington Post on ‘Fuck’

From WaPo TV critic Lisa de Moraes’s column about “The View” and Michaele Salahi, who is best known for…oh, who gives a [have sex]? Just notice how the WaPo editors handle the big F:

Washington Post's word for "Fuck"

Text:

In theory, Michaele was there, with the show’s other cast mates to plug the new “Housewives” debut. But Michaele wanted to talk about how Whoopi had been “berating” her backstage on “The View.” In fairness, Michaele did explain that Whoopi also told her, “You know me, I say, ‘[have sex] this,’…but I don’t mean that. You understand that.'”

“I don’t know her personality,” Michaele emoted. “I know her from the movie ‘Sister Act’ so I don’t expect a sister to be saying [have sex with] you. ‘”

Maybe it’s a new auto-censor they’re using? But I’m guessing a human would’ve had to add the preposition ‘with’ to the second use of the ‘fuck’-substitute…but then, what human would think that “[have sex with]” is better usage there than “[have sex]”, and also think that ‘[have sex’] is a better substitution than “F***” or “*bleep*” or “screw” or good ol’ “eff”, as MSNBC puts it? Fuck, the ‘have sex’ doesn’t even make any sense in the first usage. Is this in the style book…or maybe de Moraes is thumbing her nose at the Post’s usual way of censoring ‘fuck’?

A Google search doesn’t turn up any other obvious uses of ‘[have sex]’.

Just in case the WaPo copy desk needs a quick reference for other fill-ins to censor ‘fuck’ with, here’s a short primer (attributed, wrongly?, to Monty Python), which notes “It’s meaning is not always sexual”:

Perhaps one of the most interesting words in the English language today, is the word fuck. Of all the English words beginning with f, fuck is the single one referred to as the “f-word”. It’s the one magical word. Just by it’s sound it can describe pain, pleasure, hate and love. Fuck, as most of the other words in English, has arrived from Germany. Fuck from German’s “fliechen” which mean to strike. In English, fuck folds into many grammatical categories. As a transital verb for instance, “John fucked Shirley”. As an intransitive verb; “Shirley fucks”. It’s meaning is not always sexual, it can be used as an adjective such as; John’s doing all the fucking work. As part of an adverb; “Shirley talks too fucking much”, as an adverb enhancing an adjective; Shirley is fucking beautiful. As a noun; “I don’t give a fuck”. As part of a word: “abso-fucking-lutely” or “in-fucking-credible”. Or as almost every word in a sentence: “fuck the fucking fuckers!”. As you must realize, there aren’t many words with the versitility such as the word fuck,as in these examples used as the following words;
– fraud: “I got fucked”
– trouble: “I guess I’m really fucked now”
– dismay: “Oh, fuck it!”
– aggresion: “don’t fuck with me, buddy!”
– difficulty: “I don’t understand this fucking question”
– inquery: “who the fuck was that?”
– dissatisfaction: “I don’t like what the fuck is going on here”
– incompetence: “he’s a fuck-off!”
– dismissal: “why don’t you go outside and fuck yourself?

h/t @mariancw

I'm a programmer journalist, currently teaching computational journalism at Stanford University. I'm trying to do my new blogging at blog.danwin.com.