This story is hilarious!
Muffingate, or the making of a PBS-style euphemism | Need to Know
Muffingate, or the making of a PBS-style euphemism | Need to Know
The Daily Need
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The sausage
Muffingate, or the making of a PBS-style euphemism
By Win Rosenfeld
October 25, 2010
Theres no question that Peter Sagal is a perfect addition to the Need to Know family; hes funny, insightful and game to take on the tricky role of show closer. If you havent caught it yet, check out his first advice column. But this three-minute essay came with a problem we hadnt run into before at Need to Know: How do we say a dirty word without saying a dirty word?
Peter calls Rahm Emanuel a monkey fighter, a euphemism we concocted for another, more explicit dig that uses an M-F construction. We like it because its hard to mistake what he really means, and it just sounds funny. But initially, Peters copy was a little less abstract. In its first iteration, the word in question was: mother lover. And although we loved Peters script, our PBS spidey sense went off. After much brow furrowing and head scratching, we decided that mother lover was just too close to the term it attempted to sub for. We dont have any problem with people loving their mothers, but we felt that mother lover was evoking something a little too explicit for our air.