Something mildly interesting in the latest Willamette Week.  This letter was published.

I  am deeply disheartened by a printed review in the latest issue of a music recording by a group that calls themselves “StarF**cker.” Not the review or the music, but the actual casual printed use of the F bomb word.

For a serious newspaper to legitimize the printed use of this word is extremely vulgar and far beneath the standards of Willamette Week (which I have been reading since the first issue in 1974). The music staff should have just used the printed form “StarF**ker” in the review. If the band objected, then it should have been pointed out to them that simply adopting such an affronting name for shock and publicity value is no guarantee that any legitimate and respected media outlet would print it. […]

This is not a question of just letting cute young people “épeter les bourgeois,” it’s a question of truly not wanting to open my Willamette Week .

Type in “fucking” into the search and there will be 1,490 results.  Type in “fuck” and there will be 1,670 results.  This particular issue presents us with this:

If Bob the Builder wants a new theme song, I think he’s found one in Fuck You Safari’s “Building Song.”

Which poses the same problem for that reader, the explicit word in the name of the band.

Maybe it’s a problem, but if it’s a problem it’s one that Alan failed to catch whenever editorial policy allowed it, sometime in that period in “which I have been reading since the first issue in 1974)”.

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