The New York Times has apparently only printed the word "shit" twice — and they were both typos. The NY Post has also printed "shit" twice, but at least they meant it. More interesting: there is an outrageous print imbalance in references to penises and vaginas. The Post, in particular, has a phobia of the vagina. Paging Eve Ensler! More surprises inside, brought to you by resident statistician Andrew Krucoff.

Talk about your fuck-less droughts. When the Washington Post quoted Dick Cheney's infamous "fuck yourself" comment to Senator Leahy on June 25th, it was the first time a major US newspaper printed "fuck" since 1998, when a young, bouncy White House intern was featured in the US Government's proudest use of tax dollars, The Starr Report. (Note: "dick" on the other hand, has already been used 867 times this year by WaPo alone. That's a lot of dick, Mr. Vice President!)

New Yorkers are especially known for talking trash, or even "shit," you might say, so it's worth exploring if area newspapers reflect such coarseness. With a casual nod to George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words and our never-ending fascination with penile/vaheena issues, we offer the following Nexis word search analysis of New York's three major newspapers and the practice of f-, s-, and a-bombing.

New York Times
 Fuck: 1, 1998 Starr Report coverage
Shit: 2, both were misspellings such as "In their black t-shits they roam the streets on motorcycles, sometimes displaying weapons" in a September 1999 article on the East Timorese who were no doubt scared shit-less.
Ass: 586, Asshole: 0
Penis: 326, Vagina: 287
P/V ratio: 1.14

New York Post
 Fuck: 0
Shit: 2, in seperate articles about creepy cross-dresser Robert Durst and Madonna's "designer" brother.
Ass: 682, Asshole: 4
Penis: 243, Vagina: 172
P/V ratio: 1.41

New York Daily News
 Fuck: 1
Shit: 1, involved former New Jersey Nets star Jayson Williams.
Ass: 582, Asshole: 2
Penis: 117, Vagina: 123
P/V ratio: 0.95 (Trend-breaker Alert: NYDN hearts muff!!)

All three papers:
"Cunt" or "cocksucker": 0

Please note: Mostly we're using full Nexis text archive searches (NYT goes back to 1980), but searches on the terms "penis" and "vagina" only cover the last five years. There's only so much genitalia we can take.