Profanity in publishing: Should we give a damn?

A few months ago readers took us to task for using too much profanity on Ragan.com. After much internal debate, CEO Mark Ragan banned most cussing from the site. Now we’ve stumbled across an essay written by the founder of the company decades ago. We wonder—do you agree with Larry Ragan?—ed.

Reading an article by Yippie Jerry Rubin in The New York Review of Books, I not for the first time reflected upon the place of obscenities in print. Rubin sprinkles them throughout his yelp of pain. The four letter words appearing in the text are exhalations of disgust. Like a small boy sitting on a back fence, he seems to be taking the cigarette from his mouth, spitting, then snorting an obscenity that conveys a world of meaning too difficult to express in words.