Because it’s bad enough that there are bad and offensive words out there, kids, but imagine the unmitigated and insensitive gall to think that you could use one of them in (gasp) a Scrabble tournament!!! Oh, the humanity!
It wasn’t a four-letter word, but it was close enough to cause a stir at the National Scrabble Championship Thursday. In the final round, eventual champion Trey Wright played the word “lez,” which was on a list of offensive words not allowed during the tournament.
Normally, no word is off-limits, but because the games were being taped for broadcast on ESPN, certain terms had been deemed inappropriate, including the three-letter slang for lesbian.
“There are words you just can’t show on television,” Scrabble Association Executive Director John Williams said.
Ah. Well, as long as it was just because it was on TV, that makes it all better …
Eric Chaiken, a tournament participant and director of “Word Wars,” a documentary about the Scrabble championship, said the definition of “offensive” was open to interpretation.
“The ultimate absurdity is that you can’t play the word ‘redskins’ on ESPN,” he said.
The only silver lining here was that Wright eventually won the championship, despite being forced (after drawing new tiles) to retract the move.