Inbox

[May 6th, 2009]

IF I WANT TO SEE THE F-WORD, I’ll READ THE MERCURY

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.

If I were to call a band “Mustahfa and the Ten Screaming Niggers” and managed to get the funds to have a hundred CDs printed, would WW give it a review with the name printed as I, an “artist,” had chosen? Of course not. (By the way, there actually was a band by that name in New Orleans in the late 1960s. I heard them play there).

The F bomb word should never appear in a serious legitimate respected news outlet. Leave it to the white-trash rags like the Mercury.

Seriously, sir, I implore you to call the music editor in for a little chat and point out to him/her/it words to the effect that “in my paper, any nitwit band can’t expect to continue their policy of free publicity through shock value by officially naming themselves a gross vulgar obscenity. If the band doesn’t like it or if they feel it is a form of censorship or infringes on their rights as ‘artists’ to do whatever the f*ck they want, well, yes, it is exactly that. It’s my paper: it’s my town: I set its artistic standards.”

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 and seeing the F bomb so casually printed as an accepted printable expression.

Alan Probandt
Southwest Dewitt Street