FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 3, 2001
From: CJ Marsicano "The Webmaster Of Extreme" <cj@cjmarsicano.com>
Well, without any legitimate advance warning, it seems that
ProWrestlingDaily.com, a site that has been a longtime supporter of Breaking
Kayfabe, seems to want to subscribe to almost hypocritical business
practices. The same site that carries Bob Magee's daily Wrestling Fans
Against Censorship updates apparently will not even let me use the word
"ass", let alone any of the alleged seven dirty words, in an
article.
Early on the morning of May 3, 2001, I posted my article "A Lesson To Be Learned, or Promos 101", at ProWrestlingDaily.com simultaneously with its distribution to the other sites that carry Breaking Kayfabe. This afternoon I got an e-mail from Shannon Rose, PWD's owner, asking me to either remove the profanities from the article or censor them with the ever-handy asterisk key. I chose to use the latter option of the asterisk in order to maintain the overall artistic and factual integrity of the column, as the F-word was used in quotes from Mike Awesome and Sabu promos mentioned in the article, while the S-word was used early on by myself figuratively and the now-apparently-taboo word "ass" also came up in the aforementioned Sabu quote.
When I returned to PWD's posting page to make a new post relating to the Jerry & Stacy Lawler interview on UPN 9, I found myself unable to post at all, and then checked PWD's page to find that my column that had been posted less than 24 hours before, and had been edited at Shannon Rose's request less than 12 hours before, was no longer there. I had been censored!
Anyone who has followed my work over the past five years knows that I do not use the alleged seven dirty words distastefully. The only time I ever excessively used such slang terms in my column was in my piece "The Real Francine Fournier Story", for which I printed an advance apology to the easily offended.
Where was Shannon Rose when the following slang usages took place in the following columns since I started posting at PWD after the demise of Scoops?:
WCW Is Dead, Long Live WCW, 3.25.01 - 2 s-words.
I Will Not Cry For Thee, Jerry And Stacy, 3.1.01 - 1 f-word (in an opening lyric quote), 2 c-words (my usual descripive term for Sable, one of many long-time running recurring references in Breaking Kayfabe and its sister columns ECW On TNN Report (RIP) and Marsicano's Take), 1 "goddamn", 1 slang term for a woman's breasts, 1 s-word.
Flashlight On A Funked-Up Week, 2.2.01 - 1 seven-letter a-word. 1 b.s.-word, 1 b-word.
Maybe Shannon is counting hells and damns as well?
Compare with the previous three Breaking Kayfabe columns that appeared on Scoops and elsewhere:
One Serious Column, 1.28.01 - 1 s-word, 2 f-words (in a quoted anti-XPW response from the owner of Just-ECW.com).
Don't Believe The Hype, 1.20.01 - 1 s-word (in a Lou E. Dangerously quote), 1 f-word (as in EC-f'n-W), 1 b-word.
Not So Fast, ECW Naysayers!, 1.17.01 - 1 s-word (in a Spike Dudley quote), 1 b.s.-word.
In other words, an average profanity count. No excessive swearing, no shock value, none of that.
Shannon Rose and PWD knew of my style because I had written for them previously (I went on hiatus for them when the cancellation of ECW On TNN led to me having to concentrate my columns at Scoops per my contract with them). I was always fully aware of the site's request to change or asterisk-edit any expletives in my work, and for the most part, always did. This sudden change of heart by someone I thought was a friend and supporter of myself and my work is disgusting and disheartening.
None of the other sites (WrestlingBytes.com, InLewd.com, ProWrestlingColumns.com) that carry my work have any problem with how I write and I am never censored. And of course, I do not censor myself or any of my writers' works at CJMarsicano.com. Shannon Rose's actions of late remind me of how badly Blake Norton used to cut up and radically alter my work when I was with the Bagpipe Report in 1998.
Shame on you, Shannon. I'm still waiting for an explanation.
If there are any other sites out there willing to take the place of PWD in carrying my column, please feel free to contact me at cj@cjmarsicano.com
CJ Marsicano
cj@cjmarsicano.com
http://www.cjmarsicano.com