Wash Post Saves Countenance

Wash Post: The headline, illustration and text of "Below the Beltway," a column in The Washington Post Magazine today, may cause offense to readers. The magazine was printed before a widely publicized incident last week in which a chimpanzee attacked and badly mauled a woman in Stamford, Conn. In addition, the image and text inadvertently may conjure racial stereotypes that The Post does not countenance. We regret the lapse.

"The Post does not countenance." What strange usage. Merriam-Webster:

1.appearance, esp. the look or expression of the face: a sad countenance.
2.the face; visage.
3.calm facial expression; composure.
4.approval or favor; encouragement; moral support.
5.Obsolete. bearing; behavior.–verb (used with object)
6.to permit or tolerate: You should not have countenanced his rudeness.
7.to approve, support, or encourage.

How many times in your lifetime have you uttered a sentence with the word countenance? To wit: I do not countenance sex with chimpanzees. I'll bet even NYT wordsmith and author Bill Safire's never used the word in this context. Period. Maybe Safire would call the Post "lugubrious." [Read his NYT On Language column in today's Sunday mag] I sent Mr. Safire an email to persuade him to discuss the Post's use of countenance in this correction.

So here's the offending Wash Post headline: Monkey Business. Subhead: The Good News For Men. Women Love Apes.

First graf: In a study described recently in the New York Times, men and women were shown various types of sexually explicit videos, and sensors were attached to their private parts to measure their physical arousal. The subjects were also asked to rate their degree of arousal themselves.The study found that men were completely predictable: Straight men reported they were turned on only by images of women, and the machine confirmed that. Same with gay men and images of men. But while women of both orientations reported similarly gender-specific responses, the machine called them liars. The sensors reported that all women were turned on by absolutely everything ... including videos of bonobos having sex. Bonobos are apes.The Times treated this as social anthropology. The story droned on for what seemed like 200 pages and wrestled with grave epistemological issues involving the Cartesian nexus of mind and body

For the record I've never been turned on by watching "bonobos" indulge in F.U.C.K. Fornication Under Carnal Knowledge - or any variation thereof, all of which are false in Ye Jolly Olde Englande. Fuck etymology here and here and here.