Into the sewer

townhall.com ^ | 2/02/04 | Jeff Jacoby

[kattracks]

Note: This column contains language that may be offensive to some readers.

When Jack Paar, television's late-night talk show pioneer, died last week at 85, every obituary mentioned the time he walked off his NBC show in a huff, angry that the network's censors had cut a joke he'd recorded the day before.  The joke turned on a misunderstanding of the letters "WC" -- the initials of "water closet," an Anglicism for toilet.  By today's standards, it was an almost completely innocuous story -- a somewhat labored yarn about an English tourist writing to ask whether a Swiss hotel room came with a "WC" and receiving an answer that described the charms of a wayside chapel.
 
    But standards were different in February 1960.  Bathroom humor -- even bathroom humor that didn't actually include any vulgar language -- was impermissible in public.  Paar himself eventually thought better of his outburst.  He returned to the show in March, and said his behavior had been "childish and perhaps emotional."
 
    Those were the days.
 
    Forty-four years later, vulgarity is well on its way to becoming a television mainstay.  The crudeness is most intense on cable, where programs like "Sex and the City" and "Queer as Folk" revel in their smutty plotlines and pornographic dialogue.  But network TV isn't far behind.  (Warning: offensive language ahead.)
 
    In 1987, it was still startling to see a character on NBC's "St. Elsewhere" pull down his pants, moon another character, and bark, "You can kiss my ass, pal."  Who is shocked to encounter such stuff during prime time now?  By the late 1990s, viewers of "Chicago Hope" were hearing characters deliver such lines as "You couldn't organize a urinating party in a brewery," "Have you ever licked a mole on an Italian woman's ass before?"  "I don't watch TV; I masturbate," and, (in)famously, "Shit happens."
 
    It's hard to think of anything that a network censor would automatically blue-pencil today.  Even the F-word is no longer off-limits. When U2 won a Golden Globe award last year, millions of NBC viewers heard Bono's exultant reaction: "This is really, really, f---ing brilliant!"  Some people objected, but the Federal Communications Commission dismissed their complaints.  Bono's language was not "patently offensive," the FCC ruled in October, since he "used the word 'f---ing' as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation."
 
    Got that?  The F-word is okay as long as you use it correctly.  The way Nicole Richie did: During Fox's live broadcast of the Billboard music awards last month, the co-star of "The Simple Life" uncorked this witticism:
 
    "The simple life?  Have you ever tried to get cow shit out of a Prada purse?  It's not so f---ing simple!"
 
    (FCC Chairman Michael Powell has urged the other commissioners to overturn their October ruling.  A decision is expected soon.)
 
    This verbal sewage would be bad enough if it were limited to television.  Unfortunately, it isn't limited at all.
 
    Go into a card shop these days, and you can peruse a vast array of rude, obscene, or otherwise nasty -- sometimes unbelievably nasty -- messages.  No insult is too extreme, no four-letter word too offensive, no bodily function too taboo, to be featured on a greeting card. Or on several.
 
    The potty-mouthing of American culture is on display almost everywhere. Spend $100 on a ticket to "The Producers," Mel Brooks's smash musical, and early in the first act you get to hear the main character bellow: "Who do you have to f--- to get a break in this town?"  Drive to work and you can sample the boorishness that too many ad agencies confuse with "edginess."  Currently on display around Boston are large ads proclaiming: "Live to be an old fart."  Billboards last year for Columbia Sportswear read, "They say hoods are the rage in Paris, but who gives a crap?"
 
    Candidates for public office, however blue their language in private, used to take pains not to be heard uttering obscenities in public.  Now some of them take pains to make sure they *are* heard uttering them.  John Kerry to Rolling Stone: "Did I expect George Bush to f--- it up as badly as he did?'  Wesley Clark on C-SPAN: "I'll beat the shit out of them."  And (in 1999) George W. Bush to Talk magazine: "They think it's like a high school election. . . . They've lost their f---ing minds."
 
    The vulgarity that has become so ubiquitous is both a cause and an effect of the coarsening of American society.  We spend vast amounts of money and mental energy protesting air pollution and second-hand smoke, but the culture pollution and second-hand profanity that now occupy our public spaces get, at most, only the occasional rebuke. We tell ourselves that "mere words" can't do any harm -- we don't want to be thought rubes and prudes, after all -- and thus grow ever more hardened to the ever cruder language surrounding us.
 
    The slope that leads from "WC" jokes on late-night TV to the feculence of modern life is a slippery one.  It isn't easy to know just when to stop sliding.  But somewhere on that slope is the line that separates the decent from the indecent.  We passed it long ago.

©2003 Boston Globe

Contact Jeff Jacoby | Read Jacoby's biography

[kattracks]

Very timely editorial.

[JulieRNR21]

Especially after this lewdness on the SuperBowl Show:

http://webpages.charter.net/hiphophead/titty.mpg

[Be active]

Help clean it up.

You may not agree with their program choices but at least they are trying to clean up the garbage. Check out the site and get involved.

http://www.parentstv.org

P.S. It's NOT censorship.


You can put your TV in the garage, avoid movies altogether, and use earplugs to spare your hearing, but these forms of entertainment will still change your life through their influence on everyone else in society. Though you may struggle to protect your own kids, you can't possibly protect them from all the other kids in your community who have received full exposure.

[11th_VA]

I was searching the internet recently for the WC joke (couldn't find it) - it is so funny - well it was fourty years ago ...

[kattracks]

Aside from all of the other problems with this garbage, wasn't this portraying an act of violence against a woman?

Apparently, SeeBS and MTV condone this kind of thing.

[MHGinTN]

The degenerate that ripped the cover off of the degnerate Jackson thing said the prop malfunctioned ... both covers were to rip away, flopping both sagging bags out to the eager CBS,MTV,NFL,AOL cameras. Even in their planned degeneracy, they fail to execute. Jackson proved tonight that Michael's pedophilia is not unusual for the Jackson 'FAMILY'. Degeneracy is normal for that crew.

[NonValueAdded]

Look in the Jack Parr threads. I believe it is present in its entirety in a reply. It is probably the main obit thread.

[Richard Kimball]

"An English lady, while visiting Switzerland, was looking for a room, and she asked the schoolmaster if he could recommend any to her.  He took her to see several rooms, and when everything was settled, the  lady returned to her home to make the final preparations to move. When she arrived home, the thought suddenly occurred to her that she had not seen a "W.C." [water  closet, a euphemism for bathroom] around the place. So she immediately wrote a note to the schoolmaster asking him if there were a "W.C." around. The schoolmaster was a very poor student of English, so he asked the parish priest if he could help in the matter. Together they tired to discover the meaning of the letters "W.C.," and the only solution they could find for the letters was letters was a Wayside Chapel.  The schoolmaster then wrote to the English lady the following note:



Dear Madam:



I take great pleasure in informing you that the W.C. is situated nine miles from the house you occupy, in the center of a beautiful grove of pine trees surrounded by lovely grounds. It is capable of holding 229 people and it is open on Sunday and Thursday only. As there are a great number of people and they are expected during the summer months, I would  suggest that you come early: although there is plenty of standing room as a rule. You will no doubt be glad to hear that a good number of people bring their lunch and make a day of it. While others who can afford to go by car arrive just in time. I would especially recommend that your ladyship go on Thursday when there is a musical accompaniment. It may interest you to know that my daughter was married in the W.C. and it was there that she met her husband. I can remember the rush there was for seats. There were ten people to a seat ordinarily occupied by one. It was wonderful to see the expression on their faces. The newest attraction is a bell donated by a wealthy resident of the district. It rings every time a person enters. A bazaar is to be held to provide plush seats for all the people, since they feel it is a long felt need. My wife is rather delicate, so she can't attend regularly. I shall be delighted to reserve the best seat for you if you wish, where you will be seen by all. For the children, there is a special time and place so that they will not disturb the elders. Hoping to have been of service to you, I remain,  





                                                            Sincerely,



                                                            The Schoolmaster."  

[Elliott Jackalope]

I remember about 30 years ago Kurt Vonnegut wrote a short story called "The Great Space F**k", about a future space colonization mission set in an era where profanity had become so widely used that even the evening news shows would refer to an upcoming space launch in the bluest terms, without batting an eye. Even though the colonization mission had some lofty official name, the network news anchors and daily newspapers persisted in referring to it as "The Great Space F**k".

At the time I thought the story was amusing, but preposterous in its portrayal about future society. I now see that Vonnegut was right, and I was wrong. Profanity has become distressingly commonplace in modern America.

[canis major]

Thanks for this post.