SPRINGFIELD, MA—The White House pressured the North American Scrabble Association Wednesday to ban additional words that some administration officials thought were obscene.
In early July, the association banned 236 slurs, prompting a backlash among internet trolls and conservatives.
“The PC police are at it again!” said conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said during his new show where he yells out the window of his one-bedroom apartment. “We can’t call immigrants [expletive deleted] or say [expletive deleted] but the libs can run around spouting off profanities like ‘lesbian’ and ‘wage gap’.”
President Donald Trump heard about the controversy and spoke about it at length during a Covid-19 press conference.
“I saw the list; long list, lots of words, and 236! Wow, that’s so many words that the Democrats don’t want you to say. I’ve only used a few of them (points at a list he’s holding) that’s a bad one, I bet Joe Biden says that one a lot,” Trump said. “And this one here, ‘Whitey’, what’s that? Oh, I get it, it’s an Irish put-down, like Whitey Bulger, you know, I knew Whitey and, yeah, he did some bad things, but he always spoke highly of me, Whitey that is, you know how he got that name? He told me one time out on his boat, he says ‘Donnie’, he called me Donnie, which was fine because I wasn’t your president yet…”
Trump continued for 14 minutes before returning to the topic of Scrabble.
“So, my buddy, Mike, you know, Pence, the vice-president. He’s a good guy, not so great at parties, but he’s a good man and he tells me that when he plays Scrabble with his wife, who he calls ‘mother’, which is very strange, but I never heard you people in the fake news talk about that, but one time I said I’d date Ivanka if she wasn’t my daughter and everyone goes nuts, but that’s fine. So, Mild Mike, that’s what I call him, he says he likes to play Scrabble and he said that if we’re going to ban words, let’s ban some real bad words,” Trump said.
The president then threatened to cut the Scrabble organization’s funding.
“You wouldn’t believe this, but I had Numbers Steve, that’s what I call Mnuchin, bring me the budget and right there it had a whole page for NASA. It was, like, a lot of money. I bet Obama did it,” he said.
When a reporter pointed out that he was referring to the agency in charge of space exploration, the president said, “I know that. You’re the one that doesn’t know what things mean!”
The Office of the Vice-President later released a statement demanding Scrabble remove, “all the offensive words that I can’t bring myself to put in writing” plus additional words that may not be dirty but sound like it. The latter list included:
Nougat, bugle, twirl, kleptocrat, hoot, squelch boutonniere, lug, protrude, armadillos, dibber, kumquat, cuckold, cuirass, slaunch, toot, bungle, solipsist, loamy, succulent, bouffant, slink, puff, mumps, bisque, frumpy, and dangles.
Pence also called on Monopoly to remove some of its playing pieces, saying the thimble and the cannon were too suggestive.