Monday, July 25, 2011

GQ: Gentlemen's Quarterly or Gawky Quacks*

Years ago while watching an episode of Will & Grace, I was shocked to see the caption read Grace laughs "retardedly." Really? The caption writer is such an idiot that he or she described goofy laughter as "retardedly?"

At least, though, this was just a caption writer, not a journalist at a major magazine. The caption writer probably did not have editors either. Surely they would have seen the adverb as offending and hurtful and changed it. Plus, our society is better at realizing the power of words. That kind of word usage would never happen anymore.

Oops.

GQ apparently referred to Boston's fashion sense as "Style Down Syndrome." I say apparently because GQ had the good sense to reword it on the Web. But the editors and writers have not apologized that I have seen, or even admitted that was a bad, offensive word choice.

Bad, bad call.

* There are few bad words starting with G or Q.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://adiaryofamom.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/a-man-of-style/#entry
Here's Diary of a Mom on the topic.
Also, what about goddamned quislings?
JTG

Matt said...

Yes, of course, and she says it better. I read about it there. I avoided goddamned. Quislings, huh?

Anonymous said...

I think it means traitors, more specifically a collaborator with enemy invaders who expects personal gain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quisling
J


Blog Archive