I was just surfing during the commercials in the football game, and in less than 20 seconds on the local CW Network channel I heard the words ass and bastard.
Are those words now appropriate for use in public? If so, I totally missed that memo.
Update: I remember the very first cuss word I heard on tv. It was on M*A*S*H. Some of the doctors went north to pick up some wounded Americans that either the NoKos or the the Chinese couldn't care for. I think it was Frank Burns who pulled out a small cigarette lighter that looked like a pistol, and one of the communists said, "What the hell is that?"
At my tender age I couldn't believe they'd use such language on tv. I wish it were still so.
The first is pretty common. The second one, though, I haven't heard on TV.
ReplyDeleteA little bit sooner than that. City on the Edge of Forever. For those of you younger than your 40s, it was a classic episode of Star Trek-TOS. At the end of the show when William Shatner has seen his love Edith Keeler (aka Joan Crawford) killed to save humanity, he’s advised by LT Uhura “Sir, the Enterprise is there, they want to know if we want to beam up”
ReplyDeleteCAPT Kirk, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Very much pushing the envelope for 1967 TV.
Good call--you're right. However, I don't remember seeing that during its first run.
ReplyDeleteStill, the M*A*S*H episode probably wasn't more than 6 or 7 years later, and it was the same word.
I'm afraid what we'll be hearing and seeing on tv 6 or 7 years from now.
I'm sick of the language used on TV, even the cartoons and "family" shows use language that shouldn't be used.
ReplyDeleteWhen my kids hear such language it makes me cringe.
North Koreans = "Norks"
ReplyDeleteI think there are only seven words you can't say, and George Carlin covered them in his classic "Seven Dirty Words" bit. Warning: not for tender... eyes.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I enjoy your blog is because I get the interesting articles, links and and dead-on commentary without the profanity that is common on so many other blogs. Thank you!
ReplyDeletePerhaps, but I heard the two words I did within 20 seconds of each other. That just can't be necessary.
ReplyDeleteOh, and the speakers were women. You've come a long way, baby.
Last time I was on a plane I was very much disturbed by what they were playing on the little drop-down TVs to an entirely captive audience.
ReplyDeleteNo bad language, but they did show a Beyonce video with nearly naked gyrating women everywhere, and a scene where she pretended to be a stripper.
If things like that are considered harmless enough to play on the "entertain the cattle" loop in an airplane, I agree, I really don't want to see what will be acceptable in 6-7 years.
Meanwhile, PBS stations are concerned about running Ken Burns' documentary on WWII because the damn FCC can't tell the diff between gratuitous and non-gratuitous swearing.
ReplyDeleteWell, Sandy, I hope I haven't disappointed you by posting the foul language I did in this post.
ReplyDeleteAs for soldiers: back in my day, if someone didn't drop one or two f-bombs, discuss fecal matter, questions someone's parentage and/or sexual habits, and use the Lord's name in vain--all in once sentence!--you weren't heard. I'll never forget one of my sergeants, who said the following to me:
"Sir, I told him to do the G**-d***** m*****-f****** s***, and the m*****-f***** didn't get it done. G**-d***** dud."
I'm serious. That's how we talked. I've always remembered that quote because even then it struck me as being excessive, but that's how we talked. I'm not proud of it, but that's reality. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want Ken Burns to clean up something that extreme!
There's army talk, there's talk amongst your friends, and there's talk you use in public. The three are *not* necessarily the same, especially today.
Oh, and MikeAT, it was Joan Collins in City on the Edge of Forever, not Joan Crawford. I have it in the Captain's Log collection of Trek DVD's :-)
ReplyDeleteYour right, it was City of the Edge of Foreve, not Mommie Dearest!
ReplyDeleteThere are shows that I can't watch with my grown kids in the same room. It just makes me squirm. What happened to the funny stuff? Dick Van Dyke, Bob Newhart-where the dialog carried the joke and everything wasnt' a smutty innuendo. And it seems to be trickling down to what used to be family TV. I don't think shows like Two and a Half Men, or How I Met Your Mother are intentionally bad, but they simply do not know how to create a funny situation without including sex. And even then, it is often sexual activities outside the norm. Alot of this goes directly to the Clinton years. I really don't think certain activities were so publicly discussed until Monica came on the scene. When teenaged girls don't think that oral sex is sex, then we have really not pushed the envelope, but have willingly permitted our kids to be lured into activity that might not have been seen as so permissable in earlier times.
ReplyDeleteI believe it was 1946, when the returning GIs were king, when a Sergeant on the Art Linkletter show, asked how he felt, answered "Scared as hell." There was a moment of silence, then the whole audience went OoooOOOoooh!, Art said very sternly "We don't talk that way here" and then asked a very difficult first question, the guy missed and was shuffled off stage.
ReplyDelete