Radio & TV: WTF?

F-bombs, wardrobe malfunctions, nipple slips. BFD.

Communications lawyers have made millions from it.

It’s allowed a whole lot of bureaucrats at the FCC with too much time on their hands and who knows what on their minds to pretend to look busy.

But can anyone answer the question – What is the FCC supposed to be protecting us from? Words? Nipples?

On February 1, 2010 we will be celebrating the sixth anniversary – yes, you read that right – of the Super Bowl XXXVIII Janet Jackson nipple-slip wardrobe malfunction.

I’ll bet the broadcast barristers will still be racking up billable hours from it on that date and beyond.

On any given Sunday you’ll see more breasts flashed at a NFL game than all 44 Super Bowl broadcasts combined. And that’s still only half as many as you’ll see at a KISS concert or a foam party.

You’ll hear at least a dozen f-bombs drop at any NFL, MLB, NBA, or NHL game. If you’d prefer to limit your load to, let’s say, a half-dozen, try sitting in the bleachers at a Little League or kid’s soccer game.

That’s life. That’s how all the people swear.

The latest media-generated F-bomb of note occurred a couple of weeks back on a Saturday Night Live skit, “Biker Chit Chat.” The script had SNL newcomer Jenny Slate using the word “frickin,” – a good dozen times before her brain short-circuited causing her to accidentally blurt out the f-bomb instead.

“You frickin; just threw an ashtray of butts at my head. You know what, you stood up for yourself and I fuckin’ love you for that,” she said.





Just a few days before the SNL gaffe, WNYW-FOX 5/New York news anchor Ernie Anastos, did his own pardon-my-Greek gaffe.

It started with some innocent, playful banter with meteorologist Nick Gregory.

Anastos: “It takes a tough man to make a tender forecast, Nick."

Gregory, looking confused, replies: “I guess that's me."

Anastos: “Keep fucking that chicken.”

It’s the second most overused current catch phrase (the first being “inside baseball”). Loosely translated it means, “keep up the good work.”

The video is here. The best part isn’t Anastos’ use of the word. It’s the facial expression on co-anchor Dari Alexander.



Pardon my s-bomb but shit happens.

We’re nearly a decade into the 21st century. Don’t you think it’s time to legalize nipples and decriminalize f-bombs? WTF!

In 1950’s TV sitcoms married couples slept in separate beds.

In early 1962, after taking a continual beating from NBC ratings leader Bonanza, the ABC-TV series, Bus Stop, toughened up its dialog, taking liberal libertirs with the words “hell” and “damn.” It marked the first time on TV that someone other than a priest or evangelist used those words. An intolerant FCC ordered ABC to cut the cursing and the show was cancelled.

In April 1963, the Kingsmen, released “Louie Louie,” a poorly recorded cover of a Jamaican folk song. Within weeks, rumors that the unintelligible lyrics were sexually explicit – including liberal use of the f-word - spread across the U.S. and the FBI also embarked on a futile 31-month investigation into the alleged lascivious lyrics.

In September, 1964 when ABC-TV premiered the then-controversial Peyton Place series, based on Grace Metalious’ scandalous 1956 novel. Though the TV show could’ve been subtitled Who’s Pregnant and Who’s to Blame, the network censored the word “pregnant” for the first few episodes.

By the late sixties, previously profane on-the-radio words like “bitch” and “ass” were desensitized and worked into the mainstream lexis.

Even the f-bomb managed to escape non-trained ears on album rock radio in 1978 with the Who’s “Who Are You.” In 1991, Van Halen released their For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge titled album. Some historians claim the f-word is actually an acronym for those words.

Last year, Tori Amos had a Triple A radio format hit with “Big Wheel,” where two minutes and twenty seconds into the song she described herself as a MILF – repeatedly.

The first time I recall hearing the f-bomb in a song was in 1965 on the Fugs’ “Supergirl” from their first album, The Village Fugs.

My parents rarely cursed. I never heard my mother swear and my father’s were limited to the garden variety of “Lord’s name in vain” words. Knowing the neighborhood and the words I was bound to hear, I was taught at a young age that swearing exposed a limited vocabulary.

The first time I heard the f- word was in the first grade from Frannie Hart. His father was a hard-drinking longshoreman, who could easily drop three f-bombs per sentence.

Fast forward to today. It’s a profane insane world. Tweens and teens regularly text the f-word through Internet-driven acronyms.

The CW network, an equal partnership between CBS and Warner Bros., marketed last season’s Gossip Girl with the acronym OMFG, which is OMG with the f-bomb included. Rick Haskin, the chief marketing officer at the CW, told Advertising Age that he used the F-word reference because its tween-to early 20’s viewers used the same phrase in their own personal conversations.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney dropped an f-bomb on Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) on the Senate floor when he asked him to perform an anatomical sexual impossibility.

Not long after that confrontation, Cheney, while being interviewed live on CNN and MSNBC, was asked to do the same from an off-camera protester. The reporter, realizing the request was audible, asked Cheney, “Are you getting a lot of that, Mr. Cheney?”

Most linguists believe its origin is from the Middle English word fucken, which means to strike, move quickly or penetrate. The origin of that word comes from the German word, ficken, which has the same definition.

In 2005, director Steve Anderson released his documentary, Fuck, which examined the history and impact of the word.

Fuck, as a word, is infused in every aspect of our culture. It’s a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, pronoun, and interjection. IMFAO, it’s time we desensitize, decriminalize, and once and for all disarm the f-bomb. If radio and TV can get away with freakin’ and frickin’, what’s fuckin’ going to do? Communize us? Enslave us?

Like I said. BFD.

----

More blasts from the past