I believe Sunday night's broadcast on CBS of _9/11_, the documentary film shot by two French brothers on that day, marks a milestone of sorts for the U.S.
Unless I'm mistaken, it would seem to be the first (?) time in US television history that a prime-time network program (and widely watched, without a doubt), included notable use of words like "fucking" and "fucked" and "shit," presented intact and bleepless.
Regardless of context, this would seem to be in direct contravention of FCC guidelines, no? And yet the enormity of the event around which the program was constructed, and the fact that those words were primarily uttered by the heroes - the firefighters of New York City - seems to be an ironclad guarantee that no one with any sense will rise up to challenge it. (I could turn out to be wrong on this last point, but we'll see...)
So, assuming I have my facts straight, where does this leave the FCC on the matter?
It's rather astounding to contemplate that something of the scale of 9/11 is what it takes to get swear words on TV.
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/ dave /