Hell, as I recall, Golda Meir personally observed the assembly of nuclear weapons a few times.
I’d like a cite for this because my understanding is that it still is quite a big no-no. Yeah, they say it on cable, along with the now-accepted “bullshit”, but the big GD is off limits for the networks.
Archie Bunker said “Knock that off, God dammit!” on All in the Family, CBS prime time, back in 1973.
Which has nothing to do with current standards.
Goddamn still gets censored on the radio. See…err…hear Fall Out Boy’s This Ain’t a Scene, it’s an Arms Race and Panic! at the Disco’s I Write Sins not Tragedies.
Actually, they said it on MTV’s Daria more than a few seconds—but technically, according to the subtitles, the character who favored that particular phrase was actually saying “Gah-damnit!” But with his pronounciation and accent, the audible difference wasn’t very noticable.
Probably the same reason that they could get away with chanting “I yam sofa king we todd ed” on Cartoon Network. Y’see, they’re not actually saying something bad, it just SOUNDS just like they are!
This damned planet needs an enema.
I see now that Ray Romano actually said that Fraiser was screwing his wife, not fucking her. Which makes it more surprising that it was bleeped. And Jon Stewart had a funny quote in the Daily News today about Sally Field- joking about the censors believing she said “goddamn whore” or something like that.
I think the network censor was just suffering from an itchy trigger finger…I don’t know if the broadcast was on a delay or not, but even if it was, a short delay may not be enough time for good decisions to be made…you just hit the dump button and worry about it later.
And the FCC doesn’t care about the word “screwing” either and thats what Romano said. From the original reports I thought he dropped the F-bomb but he didn’t. When they hit the dump button on him it dropped out about 5 seconds of his routine. Just like what they did with Sally. Apparently the way they had the dump set up they couldn’t just go “bleeep wars”. That was proved by what happened with Romano. If you don’t think they would bleep Goddamn, don’t forget what happened with Kathy Griffin a few days earlier. The Catholic League was already breathing down their neck. I think what happened is stupid, I just don’t see it as censoring her due to political content.
The uncensored version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImoMGyJjWIk&mode=related&search=
later remarks backstage (audio only, static picture): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJQChe_qvHY
According to the LA Times’ Emmy blogger:
The Emmy blogger also provided a link to the FCC decision, which is written in legalese and I can’t make heads or tails of it.
After the fact, the FCC said that they would have let ABC run Saving Private Ryan on Veterans day in 2004 without fines because the language was in context. A discussion of that decision here includes the paragraph
Combing throught the FCC link I find paragraph 37:
The second half of the paragraph refers to a 1931 radio case and continues:
There’s a bit of a grey area here, but the consensus among commentators (some of whom have small sections of the alphabet including L and D after their names) is that the FCC doesn’t care about “goddamn”. Also, the FCC certainly doesn’t care about “wars in the first place”, so there’s no excuse for poor poor Sally Field to be cut off outright.
Finally, this type of thing has happened before, and recently. AT&T censored Pearl Jam’s anti-Bush comments on it’s webcast of Lollapallooza. The have admitted this was a mistake. link
Saturday Night Live did a “Sofa King” sketch, I think it was last season. I was kind of surprised they could get away with it. See also the “Colonel Angus” sketch from a couple of seasons ago.
And not being able to just bleep words is incredibly @#%ing stupid. What, they've lost the technology and can now only show a silent shot from outside the building? If we're exposed to even the visuals of people swearing our ears might begin to bleed and we'll all lay down and cry like two year old? %^& that and %^&* them.
Maybe the FCC wouldn’t have done anything. However the TV academy is a bit touchy about blasphamy this week. I think that has a lot more to do with it than any political statements.
Could be. Does anybody care what the catholic league thinks? I mean, we don’t stone people for saying Jehovah anymore, and I have a closet full of unsold false beards to prove it.
I think the answer to this is that the person manning the button went way beyond the call of duty. Hell, I think they deserve a medal for their courageous service. It’s worth mentioning, of course, that blasphemy is condoned by the FCC and Mr. Donahue can suck it. 
A related question: as someone who doesn’t watch much (any) network television anymore, when did the bleep button get phased out? It seems such a simple technology to hit an override on the sound feed and play whatever you want. Especially if you’re broadcasting with a tape delay. What the producers seem to be doing is trying to pretend that they’re not editing the content and they come across as sectimonious fuckwits. At least, that’s what it looks like from here.
CBS basically tore apart their radio division because of what the Catholic League thinks. Unfortunately it is reality. The suits have no backbone. Here is a story with the official reaction from Fox. I’m going with stupidity not political censorship.
Gigantic super sized helpings of stupidity with very little backbone in sight. Thanks for the link. It was… interesting.
I guess I was right about the outdoor shots as well. We can’t even watch somebody curse because it might be too offensive. There aren’t enough rolleyes in the world.