Don’t Think Of “Elephant”

You’ve all  heard of the thought experiment involving the command, “Don’t let the thought of an elephant cross you mind, however fleetingly.” The point, of course, is to demonstrate that you can’t consciously not think of something without thinking of it.

An unwittingly hilarious editorial in the Washington Post this morning brings that experiment, and its inevitable elephant, to mind. The ever so prim, proper, and fastidious editors — presumably with a list of words (printed in invisible ink?) that should never be spoken or printed in hand — urge a prominent organization in the nation’s capital to “take cues from a New York school district” and abandon a word rich with tradition, long part of its name and identity. Of course, being prim, proper, and fastidious themselves, the editors cannot bring themselves actually to name the word that should be abandoned.

As close as they could bring themselves was, in describing the “shouting and booing” in New York school board meeting where the dreaded word was dropped, noting that “There was a veiled reference to Washington’s football team, which has the same name as that which Lancaster dropped but that, to date, sadly lacks the small school district’s thoughtful approach to the problem.”

As their reference to that “veiled reference” makes clear, the veil is pretty transparent. The prim, proper, and fastidious editors know full well that their readers know what word is not being printed. Which raises the question: what’s the difference between actually printing a word and tiptoeing around it in such an awkward manner that everyone of course can be confidently predicted to call that word — the elephant — to mind?

Out of deference to the editors’ sensitivity on this topic I will politely refrain myself from mentioning  the offensive term (I wouldn’t want to provoke a fainting spell should one of them stumble unintentionally upon this post), but I can’t keep from wondering how, in good conscience, they can with apparently no qualms of conscience continue blithely printing articles about the Atlanta Braves, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Florida State Seminoles, etc.

Say What?