August 8 was a momentous day, at least in my geeky world. That was because The New York Times decided “bullshit” was Fit To Print. Twice before in its 164-year history (in 1977 and 2007), the paper quoted someone as saying the word, and it has appeared on the paper’s website, but its first straight-up print appearance, with no quotation marks, was in this sentence from Neil Genzlinger’s articleabout Jon Stewart’s final broadcast: “He delivered a monologue on the theme of bullshit, a word he used over and over in the span of a few minutes.”
The Times’s history with this and related words is interesting. ...
If the NY Times can do it, does that mean that we can do it too? Of course, it would be only in situations where we're quoting someone else when it is relevant. For example, hypothetically, I might write a blog post that says "Tim Haab, chair of the Department of AEDE at The Ohio State University, wondered aloud if everyone else in the profession realized that the latest industry funded attack on contingent valuation was pure bullshit."
