"Sexual behavior was also generally considered off limits"
About this Quote
“Sexual behavior was also generally considered off limits” lands with the cool understatement of someone who spent decades inside institutions built on omission. Roger Mudd isn’t describing a moral stance so much as a professional climate: an era when newsroom judgment, public taste, and political power all agreed that certain subjects should remain politely unspoken. The line’s force comes from its passive construction. “Was considered” dodges naming who did the considering, which mirrors the very system he’s pointing to - a distributed, self-enforcing code where editors, producers, sources, and audiences quietly policed the boundaries together.
The word “also” is doing quiet work. It implies a list of taboos that once governed mainstream journalism: private life, money, mental health, marital arrangements, the stuff that could fracture the public image of leaders and, by extension, the access that reporters depended on. In that context, “off limits” isn’t just prudery; it’s an admission about power. If you can’t ask about sex, you can’t fully ask about hypocrisy, coercion, or the ways personal conduct shapes public decision-making. You’re left covering policy theater while the human leverage stays backstage.
Mudd’s phrasing carries a faint self-indictment, too. It’s the sound of a veteran acknowledging that “objectivity” often doubled as a comfort with silence. Read now, after the Clinton era, after #MeToo, after the tabloid-to-Twitter pipeline collapsed old gates, the sentence becomes a timestamp: not nostalgia, not outrage, but a wry record of how quickly the “unaskable” becomes mandatory.
The word “also” is doing quiet work. It implies a list of taboos that once governed mainstream journalism: private life, money, mental health, marital arrangements, the stuff that could fracture the public image of leaders and, by extension, the access that reporters depended on. In that context, “off limits” isn’t just prudery; it’s an admission about power. If you can’t ask about sex, you can’t fully ask about hypocrisy, coercion, or the ways personal conduct shapes public decision-making. You’re left covering policy theater while the human leverage stays backstage.
Mudd’s phrasing carries a faint self-indictment, too. It’s the sound of a veteran acknowledging that “objectivity” often doubled as a comfort with silence. Read now, after the Clinton era, after #MeToo, after the tabloid-to-Twitter pipeline collapsed old gates, the sentence becomes a timestamp: not nostalgia, not outrage, but a wry record of how quickly the “unaskable” becomes mandatory.
Quote Details
| Topic | Respect |
|---|
More Quotes by Roger
Add to List
