Some English words should be forced to wear skirts and pants, just so readers don't spot the naughty combinations of letters lurking within. Fortunately, a computer in the service of the British telecom giant Virgin Media has dared to act where the rest of us have complacently dozed.
For several days, a system that was supposed to insert asterisks in any rude words in Virgin's online television listings went a step further. It began censoring harmless words that, when parsed, triggered the computer's alarm. Among the victims: a documentary called The Golden Age of Ca**ls (Canals), film director Alfred Hitchc**k, author Charles D**kens and the London football (soccer) team A***nal – sorry, Arsenal. (The computer arguably made that last one worse.)
Virgin issued a statement acknowledging its "temporarily overzealous profanity checker" (must be those Virgin eyes) and joking that "the altered titles have been swiftly an*lyzed." And, to be fair, the computer was only doing accidentally what late-night U.S. talk-show Jimmy Kimmel Live has been doing intentionally with its long-running "This Week in Unnecessary Censorship" segment, bleeping perfectly harmless speeches to create the illusion of offensiveness.
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Indeed, news of the Virgin computer's philological dig may add a certain frisson to everyday conversations, as those of us customarily insensitive to the words within our words realize how bold we are in fact being. Who will now feed a cockatoo or dicker at a flea market without blushing?
And don't look to asterisks for help. Six innocent letters in the very word "asterisks" are surrounded by a term of questionable propriety. A swig of something strong – look into Virgin for a clue – might temper the, um, embarrassment.