It gives a whole new meaning to words and pictures

Perhaps it is creeping Canadian reticence that has infected The New Republic since that magazine was taken over by the CanWest Asper family. But editor Frank Foer killed a commissioned illustration for an article on swear words in this week's issue, according to a story in SF Weekly.

Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker had written an article on curse words titled "What the F***?", exploring the special ability of dirty words to trigger emotions, censorship, and outrage.

TNR art director, Joe Heroun commissioned San Francisco freelancer Ward Schumaker to illustrate the piece; the two agreed that it wouldn't depict racial slurs, just the excrement-related and sexual ones.

They were both hesitant about using the loaded C-word, but New Republic editor Franklin Foer gave the art director the green light for that word, too, in the spirit of the piece that questions why certain combinations of letters are obscene.

The two aimed for irony with his composite illustration — using blocky, red, alarmist letters to spell out the tame words, and loopy calligraphy to spell out the offensive synonyms. The art director wrote that the result was "awesome."

Then last week, Schumaker received another e-mail: Foer had gotten cold feet. Schumaker says he was angry, since all but one of the words appeared in the article itself, and he was instructed to include the C-word.

Editor Foer said that the illustration was "too powerful, too pungent."

"It's a great illustration, and I'd hang it on my office wall. But it's so visceral that I was worried it would deflect too many people from entering into a wonderful piece about profanity. ... People can decide to read a piece if they want to, but the art was unavoidable."

Here is the illustration: the editors among you may thereby reflect on whether you'd have run it, or not.
[illustration by Ward Schumacher]