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Saturday 30 August 2008

Well, hush my mouth

Boris Johnson wrote for the New York Times, which found some of his words unfit to print

'We just cannot say this,' said Tobin. 'You could say this, and I wouldn't disagree with you. But this administration takes Gulf war syndrome seriously, and so does this newspaper.' You must be joking, I said. OK, so my point was vigorously and perhaps provocatively made, but wasn't that one of the objectives of journalism? This was not the New York Times speaking in propria voce. These were the opinions of a British Conservative MP, and I would, of course, take all the consequences.

No dice. Tobin was immovable. 'It's got to come out,' he said, and it did. In the whole poker game, I took only one trick. Tobin had told me at the outset that he had 'issues' with my introductory sentence, and we reverted to this problem at the end. The sentence was very short. It was a sarcastic reference to Rumsfeld's offer to go ahead without a British contribution to the war effort. Rummie's words struck me as deeply embarrassing for Blair, who had made such heroic efforts to spin the case for action in Iraq, and who had expended such prodigious quantities of political capital in support of Bush.

The intervention also sounded faintly dismissive of the 35,000 British troops who are about to engage in the liberation of Iraq. So I began the piece with the words, 'Gee, thanks, guys,' and Tobin wanted those words removed. For the life of me, I couldn't see why.

All right, it was a bit colloquial, but the idea was to try to be snappy, and to draw the reader in: the New York Times might be grand; she might be a crinolined beldame of political correctness, but surely she could tolerate a little slang. At last, Tobin revealed the true concerns of his multitudinous line-editors and page-editors.

'OK, Booris, I'll tell you what the problem is. Our problem is that ÒGee” is an abbreviation for Jesus. For a century this has been a Jewish-owned paper, and we have to be extremely sensitive about anything that might offend Christian sensibilities.

'We can say ÒGod”, ÒGod” is fine, but we have to be very careful about anything that involves the name of the Lord and Saviour.'

'Jesus H. Christ,' I said, 'this is insane. This is utterly insane. I really think we ought to try to get that one in....'

Tobin who, as I say, was at all times a very reasonable and understanding editor, finally agreed to consult the Brahmins. There was a long pause, and I imagined him going down a corridor of glass boxes, as the question was referred to ever higher authorities on what was permissible.

'OK, Boris,' he returned at length. 'We can go with ÒGee''.'

'Gee, thanks, Tobin,' I said.

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