Bleepity Bleep Bleep Blur
Speak no evil. See no evil spoken.
PBS just announced a new policy regarding the editing of curses: between the hours of 6am and 10pm, any and all curse words shall be both BLEEPED and BLURRED.
How dost one blur an expletive? Simple, just look at the guy to the left. He didn't say anything naughty. Nope. No way. I mean, how could he have said anything at all -- the poor man has no mouth. Leave him alone, already.
In addition to pixelating dirty mouths, PBS will now bleep compound curse words in their entirety, such that "mother-bleep-er" will now be heard as "bleeeeeeeeeeeeep." Similarly, "bull-bleep" will now be extended to "bleeeeeep." All of this prolonged bleeping and obscuring-of-the-lips is likely to leave millions of TV viewers across America asking themselves, "what the fuck just happened?"
But PBS stations really must cover their asses (still ok by FCC standards, bitches) during these uncertain times. The new maximum pricetag for an indecency violation would put many public TV stations out of business faster than the NSA can flag your myspace page. Although the feds have waffled on the indecency issue so much that the major broadcast TV networks are kicking and screaming their way to court with first amendment concerns, most stations are opting to play it safe. Helmet, knee pad, elbow pad, shin-guard, neck brace safe.
Over here at WFMU, we've learned to embrace the bleep. Won't you download our bleep?
- Really Red "I Was A Teenage Fuckup" (MP3, radio edit)
- John Denver "Annie's Song" (MP3, radio edit from Scott's 2005 Marathon Premium To Sir, With Love)
- Ex Blank Ex "You're Full of Shit" (MP3, radio edit)
- David Lee Roth's between song banter, from Brian Turner's 2005 Marathon Premium Shut Up and Play, Vol. 2 (real audio, radio edit from an archive of Brian's 2005 Marathon show w/ co-host Mike Lupica)
- Dead Kennedys "Too Drunk To Woo-Hoo" (real audio, radio edit from an archive of the Cosmic Cowboy's show)
One of the best bits on Jimmy Kimmel's show is "Unnecessary Censorship" where he "helps" the FCC by purposely bleeping and blurring innocuous TV footage, to hilarious effect. There's a bunch of them on youtube.
Posted by: oscar | July 10, 2006 at 06:03 PM
Now it will obviously become a challenge to time your curses as to spell out naughty words in bleeping Morse-code... Freedom of bleeps!
Posted by: poesboes | July 10, 2006 at 07:24 PM
I've always thought the ultimate challenge in radio editing would be to sanitize the song "GDMFSOB" by Bad Posture. It's on the Not So Quiet on the Western Front compilation.
Posted by: Joe the Lion | July 10, 2006 at 11:18 PM
Can anyone provide a title, link or source for the original un-edited version of the Diamond Dave rant? Or just email the entire thing to me here at work (bleep em). I HAVE to have that.
Thanks.
Posted by: John C. | July 11, 2006 at 09:20 AM
And then there are all the times the 7 words you can't say on the radio have aired on FMU (and other radio stations). For at least one, see my "How to be an FMU DJ" sound file on my Yahoo briefcase here: http://briefcase.yahoo.com/lipwak in the FMU files folder.
The above was Irwin, in the 80s, going through how to do radio FMU-style with a new DJ (I forget his name, Neil somebody?, but it rang bells when we discussed it awhile back). A kid calls in and asks to hear the Dead Kennedy's song mentioned in the article above. One of many times this kind of thing has happened on FMU. I have more over the years. (Maybe I should make a compilation?)
I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm all for freedom of speech. This was pretty funny.
Cheers,
Lipwak
Posted by: Lipwak | July 11, 2006 at 11:12 AM
too bad you can still tell he's saying "fuck" by the way his forehead wrinkles.
And I've become offended by how far the FCC and its associated ass kissers have gone to avoid transmission of a handful of words.... seriously, nothing offends me more than hearing about how easily people are offended. And forget about being offended by a WAR with DEATH and MURDER on the news 24-7 - its those evil 4-letter words that are the real culprits.
Posted by: Steve PMX | July 11, 2006 at 05:11 PM
Never mind...found it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKTc9VaNIiI&search=david%20lee%20roth
Posted by: John C. | July 13, 2006 at 11:07 PM
My tip of the hat to Scott or whoever edited the brilliant, near-popsicle-stick-choking-with-laughter editing of John Denver.
Posted by: The Cockroach of Del Monte | July 14, 2006 at 07:10 PM