The C word

I saw Jane Fonda on Today yesterday, and somehow it slipped past me that she said the "c" word on live TV.

Does this means my morals are forever corrupted because I didn't notice it? Does this mean there is something I have to worry about because my children were in the room, too? Do I need to be put in stocks in the public square, like poor Meridith, who didn't react fast enough and was suspended this morning from the show?

Nonsense.

Every night on television, each and every one of us is exposed to the visual pornography of violence delivered live into our homes. The prudery that demands that none of us ever say another name for our body parts, that barely lets us acknowledge that we have them in the first place, demands a swift justice be meted out for the mention of anything other than the clinical "vagina". We can see gunplay, we can see cruelty, we can see drugs and alcohol and every step along the way to sexual degradation, but we can't say "cunt", a word that means "wedge" in latin. The FCC demands that no one ever know what a real breast looks like, or a real body - but we can show a politely dead one on the news, and as long as the blood is only a little bit, that is perfectly OK for family hour. It's no different in a society that makes women nurse their children in bathrooms, out of the public site, lest someone find a feeding infant to be offensive to their delicate sensibilities. I can remember breastfeeding my daughter under a blanket, facing a wall in Paramus Park, and having someone tap me on the shoulder to complain. Why can't I tap the FCC on the shoilder and tell it just how ridiculous this all is?

So three cheers for the moral watchdogs that decide what is appropriate in your home and mine. Or, as my father used to say "What a bunch of clueless assholes."