One late afternoon, about 15 years ago, then managing editor John Harding pulled the night shift of editors and reporters from news and sports into his office.
"I've had some complaints," he started, which everyone knew meant he had received just one complaint but was taking it seriously. "Some staff have overheard some of the conversations you guys have in here at night. Tone it down. Watch the language. This isn't a locker room."
Everybody nodded, faces sombre.
Of course, it happened again that night and every night after that because "you guys" was an all-male contingent in the newsroom at night. F-bombs, politically incorrect taunts and demeaning sexual taunts against each other flowed faster than the headlines for the next day's edition. Nothing was out of bounds, in volume or content.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the building, a similarly sized contingent of almost all female staff worked the same shift, designing ads. Their locker room was less adversarial but no less vulgar.
Yet there were lines, built up over time with trust and camaraderie, regarding who, when and where this kind of talk was appropriate. Crude was laughed at but cruelty was not. Spiteful commentary was challenged but also in an effort to help whoever crossed the line save face - for example "hey, come on, BLANKETY BLANK, what did she ever do to you? Maybe if you weren't such a BLANKETY BLANK about it."
Not everything stayed in bounds but the lines were respected, even by the most flagrant and frequent violators.
Nobody wanted to be known as a jerk or, worse, a creep.
Everyone knew there was a time and a place.
Donald Trump's comments about women, made to an Access Hollywood host and cameraman in 2005, are offensive, not just for their content but for the context in which they were made.
People make tasteless comments to each other all the time.
The whole premise of the party game Cards Against Humanity is win each round with the most offensive and obscene comeback possible. Few individuals - both men and women - can piously claim to never have uttered similar words and sentiments at some point in their past, out of anger, idiocy or the comfortable presence of friends and family who know the bile coming out of your mouth does not reflect the decency in your heart.
Yet few individuals would have both the arrogance and the stupidity to make comments like that in public, while sober, to people they barely know, with one of them holding a video camera.
Trump was long past old enough to know better but he's also old enough to remember a time when talking about women that way was acceptable in almost any time or place, so long as it wasn't in regards to the mother, daughter, sister or wife of one of the men present.
He's also old enough to remember a time when women were regularly grabbed, groped, and pinched at work and other public places. After all, he was a rich young and single white man living in New York City in the late 1970s, at the height of disco and before AIDS.
When he says he wants to make America great again, he's not only talking about a bustling economy with lots of jobs and everybody getting rich. He's also looking back fondly on a time when men were men, not sensitive metrosexuals, and women were girls who knew their station, both at home and at work.
In his world, feminists are losers who don't appreciate everything men do for them. In his world, rich and powerful men should be entitled to enjoy the spoils of their success, which means saying what you want when you want, without fear or penalty, and the pleasure of beautiful women, whether they want to or not.
There isn't a hill of Tic Tacs big enough to make this little boy fantasy palatable to anyone except for Trump and the dirty old dinosaurs like him.
