For those who have not seen this, Sally Fields won an Emmy & took the time to acknowledge “the mothers who stand with an open heart & wait. Wait for their children to come home from danger, from harm’s way, and from war.” She continued, and Fox didn’t like what she had to say, injecting a giant disco ball and cutting the sound:
I don’t expect much more from Fox, but it is unfortunate that free speech on TV only includes those who support this administration.
In similar (that is, Emmy-related) news, comedienne Kathy Griffin was also censored for saying that Jesus had nothing to do with her Emmy win & that she would begin to worship that golden idol instead (oh, and that he can “suck it”).
I don’t want to get into a discussion of whether or not matriarchy would be more peaceful or whether Jesus should suck it or not. What concerns me much more is the censorship. Okay, you’re not supposed to swear on TV (but naked boobs are okay): so bleep a word or two. We know that the technology for precisely this exists since it has been used in the past. Censorship, to a limited extent, to save the poor, virgin ears of children and Christians from hearing horrible, hell-damning words like “suck” or “goddamn”, is (socially) acceptable in the sense that it has been going on for some time. And I’ll be the first person to say that these are not comments that should ever appear on Sesame Street, but after 9pm one can assume that either only adults are watching or only children who are allowed. Would “pagans suck” or “thank god we’re in this war” have been censored? I think we know the answer to that.
If you feel so moved, tell your local Fox affiliate what they can suck.
0 responses so far ↓
1 xJane // Sep 18, 2007 at 11:56 am
see it here
2 amelia // Sep 18, 2007 at 2:08 pm
i’ve been wondering exactly what sally field said. frankly i’m stunned that they censored such a comment. i was unaware that “goddamn” constituted a curseword that must be censored. had it been used of anything but the war (or perhaps the bush administration or jesus) i’m sure it would have sailed right by the righteousness of the fox conglomerate.
and while i’m not particularly enamored of kathy griffin’s comment, i don’t see why that should have been censored, either.
just another case (in a long history) demonstrating that censorship has little to do with protection of abstract ideals or innocence and everything to do with socio-political ideology and power.
3 Elaine // Sep 18, 2007 at 2:52 pm
I saw very little of the awards show (although I rarely miss the five biggies…Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, Tonys, Golden Globes), but did happen to be watching when Ms. Field was giving her speech and I remarked to my mother that the crap was certainly going to hit the fan over that sloppy bit of censorship.
I think it was uncalled for, and I think FOX used her use of “goddamn” as an excuse because it would have been easy enough to censor only that word if they felt that they had to for the rebroadcast in this time zone…because it wasn’t only the 7-second delay or whatever, but a three-hour delay due to time zones.
And, yeah, I do think we all know the answer to what would have happened if Kathy Griffin had said something offensive to Wiccans or if Sally Field had spoken out in favor of the war. Which is to say, not a thing.
4 JohnR // Sep 18, 2007 at 6:44 pm
xJane, did you change the input format to “Full HTML?”
5 JohnR // Sep 18, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Never mind–just reached in and flipped the bit for you. I can explain more when you’re online next.
6 xJane // Sep 18, 2007 at 8:15 pm
for fixing that, JohnR…I’ll be better next time, I promise. Oh, and what she said was, “…no goddamn wars in the first place, thank you” I didn’t see the whole thing until just now. It’s at about four mins. in on this Larry King clip.
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