A word deferred by the New York Times

Wherein ass ass ass ass ass


Diner's Journal is a blog by the NY Times resturant critic, Frank Bruni. Interesting info on food and restaurant issues. Yesterday, there was a post about truffle oil:

Truffle oil has become a lazy shorthand for luxury and an easy bid for attention.

But it’s clumsier than actual truffle shavings — more intrusive, less decorous. You smell it right way, and you can sometimes smell it on its way, the scent reaching you before the dish in which it’s present does. You taste it in the foreground, in the background and in the middle of the dishes in which it appears, especially if more than a small measure of it appears.

It threatens to clobber everything else, unless of course it succeeds in clobbering everything else. And its taste and scent sometimes linger past their welcome.

I can't stand truffle oil, and as Bruni is writing about the abuse of truffle oil and its often overwhelming odor and taste, I commented and left my favorite quote on the subject. That being Poppy Z. Brite's:

Truffle oil is the ketchup of the modern foodie. I didn't make that up, but I fervently agree with it. Plus it tastes like ass.

But if you look at my comment you'll see that the last sentence is not there. First of all, the sentence is relevant to Bruni's theme, and secondly, deleting it makes the preceding sentences sound like an incomplete thought. Truffle oil is overused and it's even more annoying because it's nasty. And thirdly, ass? The censor has a problem with ass? Give me a break. Searching for "ass" it doesn't appear that the paper itself has a problem with it. So I left another comment, this time with a little editing:

Looks like the last sentence of the Brite quote was removed. Perhaps rewriting it will make it past the moderator: "Plus it tastes like ***."

Or, perhaps not--that's a paraphrase. I checked back a couple hours later and this comment was no longer in existence; completely erased and moderated away. Now I'm curious to see what other "blogs" the NY Times runs and investigating if a stick-up-the-ass moderator oversees all of them.