here is a note i wrote to an editor at the nytimes, and i am throwing it out there for any ethics person (howard kurtz, say, or a prof at columbia) to solve theoretically, or for any actual editor on a mainstream-press opinion page to solve practically, with a column by me or anyone else. if you know any such people, see what they think.
hey ****,
i have an interesting challenge for you. or at least i think it's interesting. indeed, i think it sets the editorial board of the nytimes a seemingly insoluble, fundamental moral dilemma, a new wicked wicked question in journalistic ethics (or would if they noticed it).
my view is that the use of such words as 'nigger', 'fag', and bitch' should be entirely unrestricted. in a couple of long blog entries, i argue this sarcastically, elaborately, and - in my own opinion - devastatingly.
really, i'd pitch you a column on this, geared to the amazing lily allen video. however, as i remark in the second entry, i could not possibly express these opinions in the new york times without betraying them, deploying layers of euphemisms, observing precisely the taboos that i am arguing are superstitious nonsense.
i do not think that the other side has this problem. their views can be expressed in the language they themselves need to express them in. you're not going to take a feminist who is arguing against 'bitch' and force her to use that very word in her column.
so i say this represents an actual conceptual dilemma that has the actual effect of making it impossible for me to express my actual opinion - which is surely one of the basic possible opinions on this question - in the mainstream press. it's so unfair! you're suppressing my argument for free expression!
so here's the challenge: find some way that it would be possible to make my perfectly legitimate argument about an important issue in the times without making myself into a laughable hypocrite in the process. (that does not entail accepting any particular column!).
now, why do i say that the dilemma is fundamental? well, think about it from the point of view of the editorial board at the new york times, the washington post, the guardian (as it publishes snowden): you have to choose between your fundamental professed values - fairness to all important sides of an important issue, free expression of ideas - and your actual policies. so, it's pretty simple: your decision shows what the actual values of your publication are. that's pretty fundamental. it is not a new dilemma for me: i had a long go-round with several editors at the los angeles times about it after i submitted a specific column in, i think, the late 90s. it appeared with 'the n-word'. i was a chump under my own by-line, a betrayer of my own convictions. well, homie don't play that no mo. but it's still a problem for y'all!
