Does profanity on television shock you?
You're sitting at home relaxing. Maybe you're watching a news program. The sound is on, but you aren't listening all that closely. Then, out of nowhere, somebody says what's considered a swear word. You stir a bit in your seat. You aren't quite sure what you just heard. Did he/she really say that? You reach for your remote and try to rewind the program. You want to make sure of what you thought you heard...and you do it over and over again. Finally, you realize it's not your hearing fading. You shake your head...smile a bit..and shake your head some more.
This happened yesterday on MSNBC. Nicolle Wallace was anchoring "Deadline: White House."She was commenting about something that happened the night before on Laura Ingraham's Fox program. Ingraham and her guests, John Yoo and Alan Dershowitz, were talking about Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman's upcoming testimony. Because Vindman was born in the Ukraine, they felt that might color his opinion about what he heard on the Trump phone call to the Ukrainian President. Words like espionage and double agent were used to describe a man who has served the United Stated with more honor than the three of them combined.
Wallace took umbrage to this, which led to this remark:
Right on Nicolle!! But that's not the point of this column.
I'm not against profanity and it certainly doesn't offend me. I've been known to drop a few of those words in some of my writings....actually more than some. A good f-bomb used in the proper place helps to emphasize a point. It can make it stronger. It's just weird to hear it on television.
Yeah, I know you can hear it and more in places like HBO, Showtime, Netflix, etc, but MSNBC isn't one of those channels.
I'm old enough to remember when CBS censors had Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore (Rob and Laura Petrie) sleep in separate beds so they wouldn't offend America....and they were married. No one wants to go back to that.
I'm not saying it's wrong that Nicolle Wallace used term chickenshit to describe the Fox threesome. She certainly could have used a much stronger word for them....I do it all the time. I'm just saying it's surprising to see it on our television screens...and probably always will be.
"Deadline: White House" starts in about three hours. I can't wait to see how Nicolle shocks us today.
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