…before I was out of high school: A dirty welcome ‘mat’ (scroll down).
New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller had his boss, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and media and literary grandees swearing like Russian sailors the other night – and they didn’t even know it.
New Yorker magazine editor David Remnick threw a dinner for Keller at his home. Remnick got to know Keller in the late ’80s when they were both based in Moscow. So after Remnick read some fake telegrams in which his Washington Post editor lambasted him for getting scooped by the Timesman, Keller reciprocated by inviting everyone to join him in what he said was a traditional Russian toast.
Click through to see the actual phrase; this is a family blog, after all. Like Mike of Cold Fury, I respect Keller’s chutzpah, even though I should be shocked, shocked by the crudity. Then again, I’m a guy, and we’re essentially big dogs that talk.
Moe
PS: If I don’t get a chance to blog tomorrow; I’m off to Kitty Hawk soon and I don’t think I’ll have web access there, so blogging from me will be sparse.
Jeez. You’d think they’d be more cosmopolitan. The verb is usually implied, but Keller went all out.
Do civility rules apply to foreign languages? Those are some smart bosses you got.
Naah, I could have gotten away with it, but it’s hardly fair to ding people for using the really Bad Words then use them myself. Even in Russian. 🙂
How does a word become “bad,” anyway?
No, really.
I’d love to see discussion and answers to that. I’ve never quite gotten it.
Swearing in a foreign language is a dangerous thing — you just don’t have the feel for how offensive (or not) the word is. I did a 9-week immersive Russian program when I was in college, and a bunch of us went out an bought a dictionary of obscene Russian words and phrases. I was too meek to actually use any of them, but one of my classmates volunteered one in class and the teacher (a middle-aged Russian woman) went ballistic.
In the case of these journalists, the comforting thing is that I’m sure their pronunciation of the phrase was so horrible as to be nearly unrecognizable to a native Russian speaker.
Moe, Scrawl your blog entries on a scrap of paper, insert in bottle and post into the ocean, the old-fashioned way.
I would imagine they didn’t master the sibilant, and “::bleep:: your curse word” doesn’t have quite the same effect, though it has a nice air of recursiveness.