I was delighted to see Ben Zimmer's "On Language" column in tomorrow's NYT, bringing "crash blossoms" to a wider audience, but reading it reminded me that one of the simplest and funniest crash blossoms ever committed was missing. Before I could look it up, though, John McIntyre was there to remind us of it -- as he rightfully should, since it was originally a Baltimore Evening Sun headline, on a home-canning food story:
You can put pickles up yourself
John had mentioned the headline to Ben, he writes, but "sadly, he lacked the space for it." Yeah, that's a convenient and well-worn excuse from people who (like me) write for print. But given the Times's record, how likely is it that this vulgarity (however mild and amusing) would ever have been approved?
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6 comments:
The gray lady is often prudish, for sure, Jan, but Zimmer did include this one: “Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans.”
I've always known that particular headline as "French push bottles up German rear".
Another great head from WWII: "Montgomery flies back to front".
True, Charles, but there are fine distinctions here: I'll bet you could make the case (as a former editor yourself) that "push bottles up Germans" is less worrisome than "put pickles up yourself" -- especially when "yourself" is the newspaper's female reader.
And Terry's version of the same (perhaps mythical) hed, you'll notice, is one the Times didn't use ...
(Terry, "Montgomery flies" is in the Times piece. And much, much more!)
*laughing!* -
I am visiting from where you are listed (in case you did not know this):
http://universitiesandcolleges.org/top-100-blog-to-improve-your-writing-in-2010/
Has it really taken more than two years for someone to note the humor in "sadly, he lacked the space for it" concerning "You can put pickles up yourself"?
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