Online publications with an email component are much more circumspect, because of spam, which creates a sense of extremely a***ly retentive prudishness.

Makes sense to me. The hard-copy SMH is less hung-up. Looking at today’s copy (11/10/2006) which I have in front of me, on page 18 there’s a piece entitled Ain’t life the Pitts? The first paragraph reads:

In her recent interview with Rolling Stone, Sienna Miller attacked monogamy as “over-rated”, insisting that we’re “all f—king animals”. Yawn. Comments about monogamy being passe are so passe. The real outrage came when she trashed the city of Pittsburgh, where she is currently filming a movie, by referring to it as “Shitsburgh”.

So while there’s still the coy hyphens in ‘f—king’ we’re able to have the uncensored ‘Shitsburgh’. Compare and contrast with crikey.co.au an irreverent news e-mail service, that has to refer to ‘sex’ as ’s*x’ in order to get past their subscribers spam filters.

Anyway, count me with those who see it not as editorial policy at work but an attempt to get the reader to stop, put in a second’s thought and smile at having done so.

The version of the story I initially saw just said that Miller’s epithet “rhymes with Pittsburgh”. That left me stumped for an embarassingly long while.

In reply to Nick (comment no. 12)—I believe Pennsylvania’s esteemed Senator Rick Santorum has had something to say on the subject!

Oddly enough (or not), another actress today is reported saying exactly the same:

“I do think on some basic level we are animals, and by instinct we kind of breed accordingly,’’ she says. “But as much as I believe that, I work really hard when I’m in a relationship to make it work in a monogamous way.’’

Johansson also encourages testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

Sounds like being an animal might be the latest fad in these circles.

Sk

Schlitzburgh, an unconscionable slur on the taste in beer of the home of Iron City? (“Shurgh” doesn’t really rhyme, since it’s lacking the stressed syllable.)

In an article in Rolling Stone magazine that hits newsstands today, Miss Miller refers to the town as something that starts with “sh” and rhymes with “Pittsburgh.”

I mean, at that point, other than “shurgh,” there’s only one option, right? So what’s with the extreme unsubtlety?

On a related note, the Post-Gazette also has a very gentle policy regarding sports quotes: you’d be amazed how many players [stink]. And every once in awhile, I actually can’t figure out what has been replaced with some 3rd grade expression.

I wasn’t able to find any references to Richard Mottram in the SMH, so I don’t know how they covered it. I think that generally they’ve been pretty liberal about what they print in quotes. The real surprise was that they didn’t print Miller’s new name for Pittsburgh.

There were many articles in the NYT, The New Yorker, and multiple other places about the controversy after Bruce Springsteen’s “American Skin” was debuted. Extensive text and discussion, with most people probably wondering what about the song was so offensive to the police officers who heard it.

There’s a bootleg available from the Atlanta shows at which the song was debuted; anyone who has heard it would understand why the offense was taken. (The SMH would have published the lyric, judging by ‘graf four.)

To his credit, the phrase was taken out of the song after the Atlanta shows, replaced by a silence that focussed and strengthened the impact of the song.