New York Times Gets Vulgar With “Douche”-Laden Trend Piece
I bet you never thought you’d see the day when you could pick up a copy of the New York Times and see the word “douche” on page one. And we’re not talking hygiene! That’s right — in today’s “More Than Ever, You Can Say That on Television,” the story begins with the casual pejorative — a favorite of adolescents ages 12 to 20 (and a certain segment of the testosterone-heavy brotherhood who add the suffix “-bag”) — to make the case for a language-based trend piece.
You see, George Carlin’s 1972 classic “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” is a thing of the past:
On many nights this fall, it has been possible to tune in to broadcast network television during prime time and hear a character call someone else a “douche.”
And it’s quantitative! In 2009, “the word has surfaced at least 76 times” across “26 prime-time network series” — up from “30 uses on 15 shows in all of 2007 and just six instances on four programs in 2005.” These comedy writers sure are creative with their newfangled slang.
“[T]he word “douche” is neither obscene nor profane,” the Times explains, but “it seems to represent the latest of broadcast television’s continuing efforts to expand the boundaries of taste, in part to stem the tide of defections by its audience to largely unregulated cable television.” A jump? Maybe. But the copy is entertaining and the story is already rising on the most popular stories list, currently sitting at number four in the most e-mailed column.
Interestingly, watchdog blog NYT Picker takes issue with the story, not for its obscenities, but for its sources:
It may be true, and probably is.
But seeing TV reporter Edward Wyatt and the NYT base its front-page reporting on numbers the paper actually requested from the Parents Television Council — a notoriously conservative TV watchdog group that has brought 99 percent of all indecency complaints before the FCC (we learned that from an excellent 2004 NYT story) — makes us a little sick.
The blog goes on to point out the absurdity in refusing to print the word “shit” — as in last week’s story about famed twitter ShitMyDadSays — while basing an entire piece around the word “douche,” calling “the indecency obsession that governs television” and the Times “outmoded and anachronistic.”
And not only did the Times cite the Parents Television Council — they worked directly with them: “Wyatt’s story reports that the NYT asked the PTC to compile the numbers for its “douche” census.” Is that reliable reporting, the blog asks? “The PTC has a stated, singular bias, and its interests are served by Wyatt’s story in promoting its cause. Shouldn’t the NYT do its own monitoring and reporting on these trends?”
As strange, and possibly wrong as it is, it does nothing to take away from the story’s entertainment value. Seeing the Times use douche is like hearing your grandparents curse.
3 comments
Rachel Sklar says: Funfact: First use of colloquial “douchebag” in a national newspaper, as far as I could tell, was the Toronto Star in 2006: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2006/08/14/toronto-star-des_e_27202.html (I have been a student of the scholarly use of “douche” for quite some time.) Great piece Joe!
Unless they were to record every moment of television and retroactively search through using the closed captioning or unless they started preparing for this article months ago, it’d be kind of difficult for the Times to produce this story.
Sure, the PTC is motivated to inflate the numbers, but so is every special interest group on every subject and offhand, I can’t think of anyone else who would have easy access to this kind of data.
Recently this site published a ranking of “worst actors” based on a website’s list of “worst films” and Defamer linked to someone’s ranking of “critically-acclaimed” actors based on another website’s database of reviews. Both sets of numbers and their mathematic formulas were clearly skewed, but once you wrap your head around the idea that their source data was flawed, you just had to accept the analysis for what it was.
Tim Graham says: NYT Picker suggests the NYT should do its own study of vulgarities onTV. Does this “expert” have any idea how much work that is, watching prime-time shows on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and CW, seven days a week for months on end? You can’t do it on Nexis, genius.
By that standard — bias means you can’t do reliable counting — he wouldn’t trust GLAAD counting gay characters, the NAACP counting minority characters, and health czars who comb entertainment for smoking scenes. They all have agendas, too.
Job hunting?
Use our proprietary jobs tool to access the largest pool of jobs aggregated from around the country.
SI Swimsuit Cover: Brooklyn Decker Joins Illustrious Pantheon, Tweets About It
Ladies and gentlemen — eh, who are we kidding, gentlemen — your Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue 2010 Cover Model: Brooklyn Decker! As has become something of a tradition, the announcement was made on the Late Show with David Letterman, which broadcast the unveiling of a giant nearly-naked billboard in Times Square. Decker has additional SI heft by marriage: her husband is tennis star Andy Roddick. Wow, too bad their babies will be so ugly.
NYC Tabloids Will Have A Paterson Scandal No Matter What!
New York was promised a government sex scandal, dammit, and we better well get one! At least if the New York City tabloids have anything to do with it. Apparently not satisfied with the news that the New York Times has only a sort of mediocre scandal to report in their much-gossiped about upcoming David Paterson profile, the tabloids have taken it upon themselves to stir up as much "chaos" as possible.
-
Coming soon...
-
Coming soon...
© 2010 Mediaite, LLC | About Us | Advertise | Newsletter | Privacy | User Agreement | Disclaimer | Power Grid FAQ | Contact | Archives | 
RSS
