Oh, the Language!
TV Censorship -
April 30th, 2009
The next time you find yourself accepting an award on live television or being assailed on your way to the basket in a nationally televised playoff game, be sure to avoid using any fugacious profanity. Earlier this week, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia upheld a federal ruling that prohibits the use of one-time expletives on television.
Sounds like blanking bullblank to us, but to Justice Scalia, fleeting curse words on TV constitute "harmful first blows to children." Really? Where was Scalia in 1979, when Kermit the Frog said "Dick Van Dyke" on The Muppets Go Hollywood? Our fragile minds are still trying to recover.
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7
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The number of words that could never be said on television, according to George Carlin’s famous comedy routine. Arrested in 1972 for performing the bit in Milwaukee, Carlin was charged with violating obscenity laws. Later, a judge dropped the charges, explaining that, while the language was indecent, Carlin had the freedom to use it as long as doing so did not cause a disturbance. |
In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.
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Mark Twain
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Amen Brother Clemens! This is especially true if you have a lot of bread riding on a college football game, and the blanking kicker misses a blanking 20-yard field goal.
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bowdlerization
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noun. 1. A form of censorship in which anything noxious, offensive, or erroneous is expurgated from an artistic work.
A bowdlerized version of a Quentin Tarantino film would be shorter than most sitcoms.
Arrested for obscenity in 1961, stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce found himself banned and blacklisted by clubs throughout the country. More of a social critic than a comic, Bruce exposed societal ills most Americans wanted to ignore. Thirty-seven years after Bruce’s death, New York Governor George Pataki granted the performer a pardon, saying the act was a "commitment to upholding the First Amendment." Pardoning someone posthumously is like taking that awkward coworker you never spoke to out to lunch on his last day—it’s a nice thought, but it doesn’t mean blank.
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Clean is good. But, we’d rather keep Ban as a deodorant. |
