Wednesday, February 7, 2007
What to censor?
Just skimming LZ Granderson's article on the whole John Amaechi coming-out party, and noticed, curiously, that ESPN's auto-censor applied to the comments (which replaces naughty words with "####") appears to be triggered by the word "gay." I assume that's because the majority of commenters would use it in the colloquially perjorative sense ("that's so gay"), but in an article on a gay athlete coming out? Leading to comments like: "Maybe its time for a #### NBA player to come out as a rolemodel for other young ####/lesbian atheletes." Of course, the commenters noticed. The fact that ESPN is promoting this story would be pretty cool if their internal values reflected that same consideration consistently.
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2 comments:
I wonder if Amaechi's book has #### instead of the word "gay".
I was in my teens when I first thought that I might be ####, but I wasn't sure. When I talked to friends they said "John, you are not ####." And now here I am, ladies and gentlemen, definitely ####.
Could be gay, could be bald, could be black. All of which accurately describe Amaechi.
For the win!
The book is put out by ESPN, so I'm sure they didn't want any offensive words in it.
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