Give 'em heck hell, Toronto

I can't tell what sort of point the Huffington Post is trying to make with today's post about the Toronto Star's uncommon usage of an unsavory word:

Congratulations, Toronto Star! You're pioneers of print: Today, thanks to TV columnist Vinay Menon, you officially become the first mainstream newspaper to employ the word "douchebag" as a descriptive term. The person about whom Menon waxed so eloquent was MSNBC's Tucker Carlson, who, as reported last week, will soon be dancing with the stars. Menon, who seems to disapprove of Carlson's extracurricular television choices, recalled Carlson's days on CNN's "Crossfire," where "he often came across as just another smug douchebag in the beltway."

Is this sarcasm? Glee? Detached amusement? Whatever it is, I'll tell you what I think: Good for you, Toronto Star. Way to not fear the crotchety wrath of your elderly readers. Way to not fear angering jittery advertisers. Way to break with newspaper tradition and actually talk to people using their words. Newspapers may be one of the guardians of language, yes, but they're too slow in acknowledging changes in the language they guard. While they're busy blocking the front entrance, the little girl prisoner inside has grown up, sprouted a huge pair of knockers and is wearing a tight shirt. See what I'm saying?

Actually, uh, maybe I got a little off track. But, listen. Newspapers want to reflect the community they serve, but cannot bare to talk like the community's members. Dan Savage said it best in this interview:

What's frustrating is that with daily papers, the editors always bitch about their falling readership, their terrible demographics, and then they're not be able to put two and two together and realize that if you don't have anything in your paper that's going to upset a five-year-old then 35-year-olds are going to look elsewhere for the kind of writing that appeals to them and speaks to them.

I mean The New Yorker says the f-word, The New York Review of Books does, and the public does. It's especially funny the knots that daily papers tied themselves into after Bush called Adam Clymer at The New York Times an asshole. Why couldn't that be in The New York Times? If the Republican presidential candidate can say it out loud and not lose the election, why is it too toxic for The New York Times? Any 13-year-old who is reading the Times and sees the word asshole in a paragraph after the jump already knows the word. Who are they protecting? They're protecting the sensibilities of subscribers they should want to get rid of. They can pick up readers who don't like their newspapers' writing to be porridge.

It's time to talk the talk, literally. Bravo to the Star for using the word "douchebag." It's not about the word, of course, but about the attitude that permits that word to run. Newspapers should be informing and challenging readers, not coddling and protecting them. If Tucker Carlson is a douchebag -- and he is -- then our newspapers should say so. In those exact words. Because that's how people talk. It doesn't need to happen all the time, of course, but the attitude of engagement and vitality needs to be there. Otherwise, they'll be stuck appeasing elderly readers to their deaths -- theirs, and the newspaper's.

Posted by Jason Feifer at August 14, 2006 01:09 PM