Naughty Bits

I would expect that free speech might run into a little trouble in China. This is what we have come to expect from repressive Communist regimes. However, this week's crackdown was enough to raise a giggle from this correspondent. China has banned television and radio ads for push-up bras, figure-enhancing underwear and sex toys in the government's latest move to purge the nation's airwaves of what it calls social pollution. I don't know about you, but the very idea of a push-up bra being sold, much less worn, behind the Bamboo Curtain sounds like the cheesiest possible victory for capitalism. This comes in addition to a ban on advertisements for sexual aids such as tonics that claim to boost performance in bed. "They not only seriously mislead consumers, harm the people's health, pollute the social environment, and corrupt social mores, but also directly harm the credibility of public broadcasting and affect the image of the Communist Party and the government," the notice said.
Okay. Enough about those terrifyingly repressed Chinese. How about those terrifyingly repressed Americans? Some public TV stations are reluctant to air Ken Burns' World War II documentary, The War, because of a handful of profanities. From what I read in an article in Broadcasting & Cable, the main profanity might be that the term SNAFU is defined. The FCC has said that it was okay to air "Saving Private Ryan" (despite its profanity being in a fiction story), but the profanities in Martin Scorcese's documentary on the Blues. Stations broadcasting "Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues" were fined by the agency over the expletives contained in the interviews with the bluesmen. Maybe he should have stuck with his original plan to interview Burt Bacharach, but heaven knows that Burt can get a little randy himself from time to time.
The lesson? Indecency is everywhere, and the government will always try to protect us. Do we really need to be protected from the coarse vocabulary of Bleeding Gums Murphy? Maybe not as much as we need to be protected from naughty underwear.