When you're a live TV show, it can sometimes be hard to keep potential indecencies off the air. Like when Jane Fonda goes on the Today show and says "cunt."
But if you're a taped TV show, you go through rounds and rounds of editing before a final product is considered ready for the small screen. It might be assumed, then, that after editors and producers watched a clip for the umpteenth time, they would've caught anything that would set off the censors. But not on Survivor: Gabon, the CBS reality series' 17th season, which is the setting for the hottest inter-orientation romance between a gay guy (Charlie Herschel) and a straight guy (Marcus Lehman).
And it's Marcus who managed to slip past the censors when, like Janet Jackson, he experienced a wardrobe malfunction when his penis slipped out of his boxer shorts during a run on the show's first episode. And then it went on TV. And, of course, that's upset the screaming queens at the Parents Television Council, who, of course, have filed an indecency complaint, claiming the manhood exhibition was not just "shocking" but also "purposeful." Idiots.
But by now, you're already dying to see the dick slip, if you haven't spotted it on the Internet already. So here it is, NSFW, below. (Did we mention this is the first season of Survivor broadcast in HD? Uh huh.) CONTINUED »
The Parents Television Council, whose criticism of Gossip Girl was used as part of the show's marketing campaign, has found something new to criticize: sex on television. Actually, yes, they've gone there before, but this time it's different: They're mad that sex between two married people is shown as the boring, trite interpersonal exchange that it is, while sex between two unmarried people is shown as a hot, nasty, animal event, which in real life, it usually is. For their new study "Happily Never After: How Hollywood Favors Adultery and Promiscuity Over Marital Intimacy on Prime Time Broadcast TV," the PTC watched more than 200 hours of televised innuendo and found "verbal references to nonmarital sex outnumber references to sex in marriage nearly 3 to 1," and other shocking statistics like, "references to incest, pedophilia, partner swapping, prostitution, threesomes, transsexuals/transvestites, bestiality and necrophilia combined outnumbered references to sex in marriage on NBC by a ratio of 27 to 1." To be fair, Tina Fey is is a genius.
The Parents Television Council, which has nothing better to do than complain about what the letter "F" might represent, is also showing itself to not even have a clue about what it's criticizing anymore. Moving beyond TV, the PTC also has its stake on video games, namely the awesomely violent Grand Theft Auto IV.
PTC public policy director Dan Isett claimed to have played the game, which made him an expert on decrying it. CONTINUED »
After 45 Internet years late to the debate, the notorious overreactors at the Parents Television Council, who like to hear the sound of their own voice more than we, are complaining about Gossip Girl's rampant use of explicit sexual imagery and tweenage acronyms. The "sexually suggestive photo showing a teenage boy kissing a girl’s cleavage" in the ads, as well as the use of the phrase "OMFG," is much too much for PTC. The whole campaign is just a "deliberate use of profanity and sexual imagery to exploit and further corrupt young viewers, and has warned its members about the show and the new ad campaign." As for the show itself? It's "the most-watched show among girls 12-17 and glamorizes casual sex and drug use among teens. Storylines have featured a would-be teen rapist, threesome among teens, and teenage girls having sex with adults." WHICH IS WHAT MAKES IT AWESOME.
