Newspapers are supposed to offer leadership and set good examples. They also are supposed to mirror the society they serve.

The dichotomy sets up the constant effort to balance reporting of the real world with the ideal.

That struggle is evident in Fort Collins, where the editor of the student newspaper at Colorado State University is in trouble for resorting to shock journalism.

He used the f-word in an editorial about President Bush. “Taser this. (Expletive) Bush,” he wrote.

Was his reporting mirroring society?

The young editor might have reasoned that if it was OK for the vice president to use the expression on the floor of the U.S. Senate in June 2004, he, too, has license to use it in a campus publication.

The vice president used the vulgar expression to register his anger at Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., for his questions about Mr. Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, getting so much contract work in Iraq.

The vice president seemed to relish his moment of infamy. He got the senator told!

That occurred on the same day that the Senate passed the Defense of Decency Act on a 99-1 vote.

Then, there was the 1999 in-depth interview conservative writer Tucker Carlson conducted for Talk magazine with presidential candidate George Bush who felt the need to use the vulgarity repeatedly to express himself.

The president and vice president’s use of the word is no excuse for Collegian editor-in-chief J. David McSwane to embrace the expression in print. But it’s one that is out there in America’s gutters and among the highest leaders of the land.

It is part of who too many of us have become. And we don’t like it. So, we go after the youthful messenger.

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