So who the *#%&$+ wants to know?

Two days later, The Times ran another article, this time about its new owner, Sam Zell. A photographer at one of his other newspapers had asked Zell about the type of coverage he expected from reporters. In responding, Zell apparently became angry because she turned her back on him before he was finished, so he directed what the paper called a "two-word obscenity" at her.

Now, I understand that The Times still considers itself a family newspaper, one in which bad words don't exist and sex ads get exiled to the classifieds section, sans sexy shots. And I agree that the gratuitous use of profanity can cheapen an august institution (even one that runs Joel Stein on a weekly basis). But it's one thing to publish an unedited Howard Stern rant or print a transcript of the latest Paris Hilton sexcapades; it's quite another when the vulgarity itself is the story. And in the case of Butz, Zell and other public figures who stir up a fuss for the words they use, The Times fails spectacularly.

Let's start with Butz. If a reader knew nothing but what he read in The Times' obituary, he'd have no clue what was going on. Heaven knows there are hundreds of offensive ethnic jokes, but Butz's really took the cake for its level of depravity and its flippant delivery in front of other government officials. Yet an otherwise uninformed Times reader is left scratching his head about a joke so "derogatory to blacks" that it killed the political career of a Cabinet member. Was it a tired retread about basketball? Skin tone? Something sexual? Was this a case of political correctness run amok, the ramblings of a tired old man a la former Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis' dismissal of African American managers on "Nightline?" Was it a dramatic reading of "Amos 'n' Andy?" The Times doesn't even bother to let us know.

Other newspapers, on the other hand, had fewer qualms about Butz's insult. The New York Times, America's epitome of a too-genteel newspaper, wrote in its obituary, "Mr. Butz made a remark in which he described blacks as 'coloreds' who wanted only three things -- satisfying sex, loose shoes and a warm bathroom -- desires that Mr. Butz listed in obscene and scatological terms." Doesn't quite capture the flavor of the original, but it's closer. Reuters used a description similar to the New York Times' measured take, as did Butz's home state daily, the Indianapolis Star. None of them printed Butz's full joke, but their approach makes them veritable George Carlins to the Los Angeles Times' Jeff Foxworthy.