Camel Toes and Dog Parts, A Requiem

For-profit, mass-market broadcast television is slowly disappearing, and that's mostly for the best.

There's not a lot about broadcast TV that I'll miss. Cable, the internet, and Netflix provide both a wider selection of audiovisual entertainment and less mutilated versions of films and TV programs. And cable shows are just generally better than network shows.

However, when network TV finishes migrating to other media platforms, I will miss the unparalleled opportunities it affords to relish the hilarity of the networks' efforts to provide the salacious, violent, and foolish programming that the vast majority of Americans want while at the same time trying to defend against FCC watchdogs routinely goaded into action by a big-mouthed minority of self-styled decency crusaders who buy their panties pre-bunched.

There is nothing so contorted and peculiar as the position of Standards and Practices departments, i.e. the network censors. In large part, that's because network censors have to spend much of their professional lives telling writers and directors that the things that Americans fantasize about constantly or experience daily would somehow destroy the American psyche if they were to--gasp!--appear on a television screen.

Equally bad, network censors are supposed to make sure that there's no "offensive" content in shows the sole purpose of which is to offer precisely such content--Law and Order: Drunken Child Molester, The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll's Gag Reflex, CSI: Death-Porn San Diego.

Anyway, network censors have a silly, thankless, and soon-to-be eradicated job, so I'd like to pull them off the court before the end of the game so that the home crowd can give them a big cheer. Yay, censors!

Also, if we're looking for an epitaph for the tomb of the network censor, I'd like to suggest two, both of them pull quotes from this week's Entertainment Weekly interview with four anonymous network censors:

I didn't know what a camel toe was. My staff looked at me and said, "I cannot believe you do this job and don't know what it is."

And my favorite:

A viewer called the other day about a new show and said the dog in it had an erection. I called our folks in Washington and said, "Talk to me about obscenity with respect to dog parts."

Indeed, talk to me, baby. But keep it TV-13.