Wednesday, July 09, 2008

The Amusing Consequences of Filtering

When The American Family Association decided to change its AP wires to filter the word 'gay' and replace it with the word 'homosexual', it had some rather titillating consequences for a sports report concerning a runner called...Tyron Gay

Marbury provides the original report:


"Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.

His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. […]

Homosexual didn’t get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead. He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday. Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: “A little fatigued.”"

It's the last line that gets me. Shows not to mess around with AP eh?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

One has to wonder why the word gay should be censored, but not the word homosexual. Is the former seen to be more offensive somehow?

Anonymous said...

One has to wonder why the word gay should be censored, but not the word homosexual. Is the former seen to be more offensive somehow?