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Marge: So what did you children learn in Sunday School today?

Bart: Hell.

Marge: BART!

Bart: Well, you sure as hell can't expect me to say we learned about Hell without saying hell, can you?

Homer: Kid's got a point.

Bart: Hell, yeah!

Marge: errrrrrrrrrr

Bart: hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell...

Marge: BART! Stop swearing! We're not in church any longer.

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What bothers me about this clever scene is not the swearing. It's the fact that this a cartoon - something long used to attract children viewers. I'm more bothered by all the swearing on "South Park" and, to a lesser degree, "The Simpsons" because children are part of the target audience. The grown up in me enjoys the humor and sometimes their point of view. I can laugh at them like everyone else. But there's also a part of me that's really bothered by the course language on cartoon shows. It mainstreams them to children who have yet to understand that foul language has consequences.

Remember the South Park episode where they even kept a running count of one cuss word being used over and over. It made a good point about how these words are overused on TV and in life for shock value but lose that shock value very quickly. I'll try to stick with "aw shoot", myself.