Pajiba

But I rarely hear anyone on the teevee say "other genitals".
I must conclude therefore, that this study is a load of shit.

Seeing as how use of a bleeped fuck went up 15500% at the 9:00 slot I think that counts for quite a bit of it. Which, by the way, I don't understand the problem with. It's bleeped. Therefore it shouldn't even count as a swear. If using comic strip censoring symbols in place of a word is fine in print all day long then why the hell do they even care about a bleeping noise? Bleep that in it's bleeping bleep.

Eh, I never did understand why people get so upset over swearing. I taught my kid long ago that there are social penalties for swearing that she better be prepared to face if she chose to use bad words (although I phrased it as, "If you swear in school, you'll get in trouble and I won't bail you out -- but I probably won't punish you more.").

I'm not going to give casual swearing that kind of power over our lives.

I see your point, Paultera, but I personally find bleeped f-bombs much funnier than I do the non-bleeped kind. But because I'm averse to a good ol' fuck now and then, I just think bleeping sells the word better. Whenever I hear it not bleeped, I don't even really hear it. It just becomes another part of the sentence. So, in that sense, for me, bleeped words should still count.

That said, this study is bleeping useless bleepshit.

$#*! the PTC keeps track of.

Say a random damn at 8:30 and they notice.
Apparantly it's OK to graphically show someone's head getting cut off and flying across the screen thus causing me to stay up all night fighting off nightmares with my 6 yr old niece (f^%#ing History Channel). Well at least they didn't swear, that might have scarred her for life.

Sadly, these people probably really REALLY care about this issue. DEEPLY. Just ask any English teacher who's found a great new book that students would actually enjoy reading but had to give it up because of a swear word or two.

On the other hand, people do need to learn to turn on their filter. I swear like a sailor around Mr. Pug, but the little pug has never heard it from me. And I've never sworn at school, no matter how much the little punks have pushed me. Regardless of how meaningless and arbitray it is to call a word "bad," we live in a world in which people instantly judge you if use those words.

I do, however, have very very good dreams in which I tell administrators exactly what I think of them using very precise yet colorful adjectives.

RobP,

I agree. It DOES really make it funnier actually. Arrested Development was great at it. The way it was delivered but also the subtlety. I don't think it makes it count more as a swear though when you consider that if you know what they're saying under the bleep (everyone over the age of 3) then what's the point?

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Bad words are only bad because someone said they were long ago. If Fuck were used constantly it wouldn't be as big of a deal. Just like nudity isn't a big deal in countries where toplessness isn't considered taboo.

Granted, rampant swearing just for the sake of swearing shows a lack of verbal intelligence. I'm not saying people should run around using swear words like they were punctuation but it shouldn't be looked upon like some awful sinful thing.

Your kids WILL know swear words no matter what you do and it's only more enticing to them because it's forbidden.

But something tells me they thought it was completely appropriate for Boehner to say "hell no" and Cheney to say "fuck" on the Senate floor.

@Dave: "Boobs" is much funnier than "breasts". "Tits" is a little crass, but still funnier than "breasts". "Juggs" can be funny when it comes from a harmless redneck stereotype. "Dirty Pillows" is fun to say, but it's only really funny when uttered by an uptight Oxfordian or other blue blood type. My personal favorite is "cans". I don't know why, maybe because it doesn't really make a lick of sense.

Unlike "melons", which are always good for a lick, but only humorous if you're under fifteen.

Do none of you have deeply religious relatives? My cousin home schools her children and almost all of her kids' friends are from their church. Everything they do is heavily supervised. I wouldn't be surprised if those kids are 5-10 years behind their peers in the knowledge and use of swear words.

I don't know why PTC cares anyway. I was at my cousin's house and Big Brother was on the TV. On of the contestants said something like "I bet you've never had hugs in the backseat of a car". It turns out the the TV itself censors the language and replaces words - I'm not sure if you can specify what words it censors or if it's standard to all TVs. The TV replaced the word "sex" with the word "hugs". Seriously.

The fact that the networks censor "reality" shows to clean up the language is fucking hilarious to me.

Goodness knows that when a fake-breasted skank is pressing up against The Bachelor in an attempt to steal him away from another fake-breasted skank, we don't want dirty talk to give any kids that might be watching the wrong idea.

"I'm sick and tired of these monkeyfied snakes on this Monday to Friday plane!"

-Snakes On a Plane on TBS or something. Seriously. I laughed way harder at that than the original line.

Did anyone watch Conan's talk with the standards and practices guy last night? With precious euphemisms like:

"Taking Grandma to Applebee's" and "Tokyo Sandblaster".

OK, I apparently didn't express myself well. I was trying to to say Christian fundamentalist, but my relatives don't think of themselves in that way. My relatives go to a megachurch with a basketball court, coffee shop, and bookstore. Almost everyone they deal with is affiliated with their church. My aunt switched carpet installation companies because the new one was owned by "Christians". Not that the other carpet installation company was owned by Jews or Muslims, they didn't go to her kind of church. Every one of my relatives' friends and associates I have met is in some way connected to their church. In this environment, there is no such thing as swearing. I heard someone say "shoot" once. These are the kind of people who care that there is swearing on TV.

And superasente, there is a big difference between not wanting your kids to swear and not wanting your kids to realize that swearing exists.

I have a potty mouth and so does my husband. We have two pre-teens who know that they can drop the occasional swear word around us without getting in trouble, but they rarely do.

I don't refer to them as bad words. I call them adult words. My kids have been taught from the time they started talking that some words are meant more for adults to use than kids, because some people are silly and don't like it when kids say them. But in our house the mantra is "a word is a word is a word".

With things like the N word or other slurs we've just told the kids that those words are not allowed under any circumstances simply because they are insulting and degrading, not out of some sense of good and evil.

Melonfarmer.

I try to teach all the younger folks around me (whose numbers are increasing yearly - doggonit, when did that start happening?) to save "swear words" for truly special occasions and be creative in daily life. If you travel to Vienna and hear kids yelling out "troglodyte!" and "inebriate!", you can be fairly certain they were once under my misguided care.
Though in agreement with a wise commenter or two up there somewhere, I'm far more disturbed by the aesthetic and consequence-free depiction of violence in the media than by any portrayal of debauchery or douchebaggery.

Christianity is the foundation of human kind. It is truly an awesome belief system. I love Jesus Christ and the power of prayer. Everybody should rejoice in the glory of God.

The massive dispute between the government and Microsoft considerations the Internet "browser," which is the piece of software program that puts a message in your computer screen informing you that the Internet is currently busy and you must strive once more later. As you'll be able to think about, the potential market for this service is huge, so Microsoft would like you to make use of its browser, and never any individual else's. ~Dave Barry, 1998

The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I actually thought IT SUCKED!