Bad Language in the News: “But what does “d—ing” mean?”

Last week hackers released a group of e-mails they had stolen from former Secretary of State Colin Powell.  The e-mails gave Powell’s opinions about a wide range of political figures, including Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill. A lot of newspapers had difficulty figuring out how to quote the somewhat off-color comments Powell made about Bill Clinton.  But I think the Erik Wemple of the Washington Post handled it best.  The quote reportedly goes like this:

I would rather not have to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect. A 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still [word deleted] bimbos at home.

Many papers went with something like “d–ing” or “di**ing.”  Cameron Barr, managing editor at The Washington Post, told Wemple via email: “We’ll avoid d-word altogether or say d—ing bimbos.”

But then Wemple gets to the heart of the issue:

But what does “d—ing” mean? “Ditching”? “Dunking”? “Dinging”? It just so happens that Powell used a slightly profane and infrequently used word to describe intercourse. Think the first name of George W. Bush’s vice president, as a present participle.

Who else in the history of newspapers has used a discussion of verb form to explain a vulgar term for intercourse?

The problem of how the report vulgar speech is not a new one. Reporters faced a similar problem in 2006 when President George W. Bush was overheard using “the S word” with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a discussion about Lebanon. They faced an even bigger problem when Vice President Cheney told a member of the Senate to go “f—” himself back in June of 2004.

Newspapers and broadcast organizations try to maintain a certain level of decorum in their news operations. But when do you do when the news isn’t fit to print?