Sometimes life gets in the way

EDITORIAL

Last week, I put a lot of thought and effort into whether or not we should run the submitted Mayor’s Corner as it was written, and then life, as it sometimes does, got in the way.

The mayor’s submission included a curse word as part of a joke about the sewer system. The cleaner version would be that it might be a few months before the sewer system is working and “it” stops hitting the fan.

The word being discussed is not a particularly big deal. I simply didn’t think it was necessary or helpful to print it in the newspaper. There are times that including curse words gives necessary context but to me this case was using a curse word for a small joke. Not really a big deal, but not a good enough reason for me to print it in the paper.

Here is a quote from an article in The Atlantic discussing the topic of printing curse words that sums it up to me.

“Many publications try to avoid gratuitous foul language, even in quotes, unless the meaning of the thing being conveyed depends on it. Otherwise, matters of taste notwithstanding, bad language is often just distracting. Plenty of people curse in casual conversation; rarely is it actually meaningful.”

In the end, that is exactly what it turned out to be – distracting – as the originally submitted column was accidentally run as it was originally submitted curse word and all. I apologize if the use of the word offended anybody.

You see, on Monday night last week I asked the mayor to edit the piece to remove the curse word. She did not seem to have any issue with the request. Tuesday at 4 a.m., before the mayor submitted the edited piece, my wife went into labor. Needless to say, some of our staff had to step up and finish getting the newspaper to the printer on Tuesday. I did not properly inform them to look for the edited text, which the mayor sent Tuesday morning.

So, we had a curse word in the Wimberley View last week. As I told my boss when I found out, “Well, crap.”