All quotations from: FCC spanks ABC for NYPD Blue rump shot.
First of all, mad props to Ars for going right for the “spanks” joke. It helps to set the tone early, like picking a fight your first day in lockup. Ok, it’s really nothing like that, I may have just been watching too much of The Wire lately.
So “rump shot” — what do we suppose that might be? Someone getting shot in the butt? Surely they weren’t showing anal sex on broadcast television — my God, think of the children, the children!
…the Federal Communications Commission late Friday threw the indecency book at 51 ABC TV stations—citing them for a February 2003 episode of NYPD Blue that showed portions of a naked woman’s derrière.
They showed her what?
derrière |ˌderēˈe(ə)r| noun informal euphemistic term for a person’s buttocks. ORIGIN late 18th cent.: French, literally ‘behind.’
Say what? They fined them for showing “portions” of a woman’s behind?
You are kidding, right?
Boy I hope they don’t find out about all those bidet ads that were all over the web a few months ago. (1) Might have to close the whole thing down. (Huh? What’s that? You can see pictures of what online? You’re kidding. For how much? Free, whaddya mean free? Where? Everywhere? What kind of answer is that? Fine, don’t tell me. Like I’m gonna believe you can see actual pictures of fully naked people on the Internet. Hell if they did that you’d have everyone and his grandfather lining up to get online. Oooooh.)
(As an aside: Regarding those ads, my feelings on them were summarized quite well by Merlin Mann who wrote “Ubiquitous bidet ads have brought an extraordinary number of human asses to my daily web surfing. Not loving it as much as I’d imagine.” My feelings exactly, Mr Mann, my feelings exactly.)
Sure, charge them for showing me Sipowicz’s pasty, lumpy, cottage-cheese ass or Ricky Schroder’s so-glaringly-white-that-it-made-Casper-cringe ass. But a woman’s ass?
“Our action today should serve as a reminder to all broadcasters that Congress and American families continue to be concerned about protecting children from harmful material and that the FCC will enforce the laws of the land vigilantly,” FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate told the press after the agency made the announcement.
Ms. Taylor went on to add that if anyone knew of the whereabouts of any known or suspected witches, they should contact her office immediately.
I suspect what their action will remind all broadcasters is that the USA is so hugely fundamentally tightly wound about anything even remotely sexual that we ought to be standing by with smelling salts, because you never know when Miss Daisy might be flipping though the television channels and accidentally catch a peek at some exposed human skin.
So please, broadcasters, be sure to make sure that you try to limit your programming to only show gratuitous violence, which has never bothered any true red blooded American.
Also, did anyone else note that this was five bloody years ago? We’ve killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in that time, but this is what we’re getting riled up about? Oh yeah, I forgot: violence is OK (especially violence against “The Others” especially if The Others don’t look like us and aren’t Presbyterian.)
The Commission ruled against a February 25, 2003 NYPD Blue scene—broadcast at 9 pm in the Central and Mountain Time zones—in which a pre-adolescent boy accidentally walks in on an older woman undressing in the bathroom. He backs out and apologizes, but not before viewers get a glance at the woman’s naked behind.
A woman’s naked behind! Oh, they said it again.
swoon
What? What happened? How long was I out? Is Bush still president? Damn. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?
If anyone knows where we might find a clip of this show, I’d love to know the on-screen duration of a “glance” as measured in real time.
The FCC declared the scene indecent “because it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs—specifically an adult woman’s buttocks.”
Phew, “buttocks” back to the safe words again.
Let me pause here to be serious for a moment. I’m almost at a loss for words to express my deep admiration to the FCC for recognizing that a woman’s buttocks are sexual organs. I mean, it’s not every government organization is willing to come clean about anal sex. The FCC has now made it a point of doctrine that a woman’s “buttocks” are sex instruments. I’m quite sure they aren’t actually endorsing anal sex, as, by all reports, the only thing that the FCC thinks should be put up an ass is a head. (I mean a cranium, you sick perv.)
I’m tempted to question whether or not the scene actually showed “excretory organs” as I’ve never considered the buttocks to be involved in the excretion process, other than sorta hiding the actual, um…. what can I call it here without being too graphic…. Um… “portal”? “outbox?” “brown eyed girl?” Let’s stick with “hole.”
ABC attorneys defended the show, arguing that buttocks do not constitute a sexual organ. “We reject this argument,” the FCC declared, “which runs counter to both case law and common sense.”
ABC tried to play dumb about the whole anal sex thing, but the FCC’s ain’t nobody’s fool, they know ABC wantin’ to get all up in dat. (Seriously — you’re the whitest Irish boy I’ve ever met… cut back on The Wire already before you hurt yourself. Go watch some Raymond reruns or something. - Ed.)
ABC also claimed that NYPD Blue’s writers did not intend the scene to be titillating or lewd, but simply to reveal “the complexity and awkwardness involved when a single parent brings a new romantic partner into his or her life.” But the agency turned down that plea as well, declaring that the scene, “which included repeated and lingering images of a woman naked from the back, with close-up views of her naked buttocks, presented adult female nudity in a manner that shocks and titillates viewers.”
Seriously, someone needs to post this to YouTube already. Please? (UPDATE: They did. See below.)
Apparently an earlier draft of the FCC’s report used the phrase “shocks and awes” but they received a memo from the White House reminding them that phrase is reserved for when the President needs to pull it out and swing it around. (What? “It” meaning our military prowess. Seriously, you’re so perverted these days. You’ve probably been watching too much ABC. What? Oh? Nip/Tuck is back on? Gotcha. Yeah, the only thing we watch on ABC now is Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Thankfully the FCC will get some of that money that they might have wasted putting more money into that show where all they do is help actual children.)
Lastly, the broadcasting company insisted that it had received only “a modest number of complaints” for the program, to which the FCC replied that the agency received “numerous complaints, including thousands of letters from members of various citizen advocacy groups.” The Commission may have been referring to the TV-indecency busybodies Parents Television Council, whose Web site listed NYPD Blue as number four of the “Top 10 Worst” prime time TV shows for the 2002/2003 season. The PTC has been known for encouraging its members to complain about shows they have not watched.
Modern day witch trials.
There ought to be a law against inciting offensiveness. It’s some form of reverse-entrapment, or a push-poll (stop snickering, it’s a legitimate term and I said “poll” with two Ls not p-o-l-e). “Wouldn’t you be offended if your child saw nudity on NYPD Blue?!?!”
If you didn’t see it, you shouldn’t be able to file a complaint about it. Otherwise it’s like me filing a complain with the Better Business Bureau because a friend of mine bought a used car that turned out to be a lemon.
The FCC asked for a budget of $313,000,000 for 2008. I would like to request that whatever part of the FCC budget goes towards patrolling the airwaves for momentary glimpses of women’s naked asses to be diverted to build new schools, and I will donate the tools necessary to police this particular “problem” for free, right here:
Dear Parents:
1) If you don’t know that a show like NYPD Blue is not suitable for small children, please pack your children up with at least 3 complete sets of clothes and drive them down to social services. You are clearly morons who are unfit to be parents.
2) If you think any child old enough to be watching TV past 9 p.m. on a school night (NYPD Blue aired on Tuesday nights) was seriously harmed by seeing naked butt on television, you are seriously deceived.
(Please note that the east and west coast ABC affiliates didn’t get fined for showing the same episode at 10 p.m. It only fined the “heartland” states, which you are most likely used to only seeing every four years when they are emblazoned in red.)
3) Please stop depending on the U.S. Government to protect your children. That is your job. Sooner or later they are going to see human flesh. You might want to prepare them for it. You might even want to help them deal with any questions that come up about it. If someone comes up to your child in the playground and shows them something inappropriate, sure, get offended, call the cops, do what you have to do. But sooner or later, please realize that the little flashes of color on the television can’t hurt you. If you want to get upset about something, you might turn on the news and see if you can get any shots of dead soldiers or civilians from Iraq who we have been engaged in every damn day since around the time that this show aired FIVE YEARS AGO.
Please note you’ll probably have to search pretty hard to find any of that footage, since BushCo. has worked very hard to make sure that we don’t even see caskets. Actual carnage? Heaven forbid.
As the man said, “What a country.”
UPDATE: Someone pointed out that the clip has been uploaded to YouTube. You be the judge:
UPDATE 2: OK, I watched the clip. My first response is that I would ha