Unnecessary Censorship
I don’t care much for Jimmy Kimmel, but I do think his weekly segment on unnecessary censorship is brilliant. For those unfamiliar with it, every Friday he runs a few video segments, often from stuff that aired on the other networks during the previous week, and strategically bleeps/blurs innocent stuff to make it sound/look as though something dirty were there. It’s good, cheap entertainment.
Apparently, Fox has picked upon the concept, minus the nuance. Someone there figured that if Sally Field says the G-word, then what the hell, let’s not just bleep out that, let’s bleep out everything else the bitch has to say. Granted, the crap that got bleeped out was asstastically stupid, but c’mon, that’s no reason to censor someone. If they start bleeping out all the stupid stuff people say, hey might as well bleep out the entire show next year. It’s not as though any of these guys are going to say anything brilliant.
The solution to dumb speech more speech, not censorship.
UPDATE: Some commenters offer an alternative explanation for the bleep: she was over time. I give the theory high marks for creativity, for plausibility, not so much. I could accept a hybrid theory, though, whereby they initially bleeped the profanity, held the button a little too long, and then figured out that she was also over, and cut off the rest.
UPDATE x2: Goochland, VA is having a Field Day.
September 19th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
From what I’ve seen, Field was way over time, which explains the cut-off much better.
September 21st, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Yup. Field was getting the hook, when she threw in her statement with the profanity. She did it you get more Hollyweird street cred by being able to claim you got pulled off the stage for expressing an anti-war statement (on Fox!) than you do by fessing up that you got pulled because you were bloviating.
And you might even fool some dumb bloggers into believing that the issue is one of free speech rather than one of rudeness in going wa-a-ay over your time limit.
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:55 pm
If going over time was the reason for the bleep, why did the bleeping just happen to start with the word “goddamn?” Coincidence?
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Actually, it might not be. It would be interesting to find out if Field was looking at a countdown clock when making her speech.
She is an actress — and has timing down.
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:06 am
Impressive timing indeed. Not only did she perfectly time her “goddamn” to coincide with the mystical point at which “over time” becomes “way over time,” she also managed to time the entire incident to coincide with the first time in history that a major network has bleeped anything for reasons unrelated to decency, tort liability, or anything else the network has reason to give a rat’s [censored because it's dirty, not because I droned on too long] about. What’s next? ESPN bleeping and blurring all plays in which a player violates a rule of the game but the ref doesn’t catch it? Get real.