Note to the Self-Righteous, Holier Than Thou Crowd – Your Television Set Has an Off Switch, USE IT

Don’t Make Us Say It Again

This Forum is devoted to Economics, Finance and Politics.  It will not have movie reviews, or best recipes for raisin bread or recommended TV shows.  It will not tell you where the best Fish Fry is in Buffalo or where the best BBQ is in Lexington (hint:  it’s not in the city, its about 8 miles west on Hwy 64.  If you have to ask which Lexington, you don’t deserve to go there).

So it is with some regret that The Dismal Political Economist is forced to comment on a television show, or more precisely to comment on the comment on a television show.  The issue is this, there is a nice little benign comedy called Modern Family and some self appointed standards czar doesn’t like part of a recent episode.

In the episode titled "Little Bo Bleep" airing 9 p.m. EST Wednesday, 2-year-old Lily shocks parents Mitchell and Cameron (Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet) with her first expletive.

The dads, who are preparing Lily to serve as flower girl in a wedding, now have an added parenting challenge.

The tot is played by Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, who says the word "fudge" during taping. It will be bleeped on the air and her mouth will be obscured by pixilation, and viewers will get the impression that her character used the actual F-word.

Well anybody who has been a parent can identify with this, which is part of the impetus for the creators of the show.

Steven Levitan, creator and executive producer of the sitcom with Christopher Lloyd, told the Television Critics Association last week that he's "proud and excited" about the F-word plotline that ABC was persuaded to allow.

"We thought it was a very natural story since, as parents, we've all been through this," Levitan said to EW.com. "We are not a sexually charged show. It has a very warm tone so people accept it more. I'm sure we'll have some detractors."

Now detractors are more than welcome to detract, and if they don’t like the program they have the wonderful option in this nation of exercising their right to watch something else, or even in the extreme turn the TV off.  But that’s not good enough for one person.

An anti-profanity crusader on Tuesday asked ABC to pull this week's "Modern Family" episode in which a toddler appears to use a bleeped curse word.

"Our main goal is to stop this from happening," said McKay Hatch, an 18-year-old college student who founded the No Cussing Club in 2007. "If we don't, at least ABC knows that people all over the world don't want to have a 2-year-old saying the 'F-bomb' on TV."

And who is this Mr. Hatch? 

Hatch, who is from South Pasadena and attends Brigham Young University in Rexburg, Idaho, said he began his anti-profanity club in 2007 when he noticed how rampant cursing was at his school and how it was linked to bullying.

"If kids are accountable for their choices, then adults should be as well," and that includes media, he said.

Of course, part of Mr. Hatch’s hostility to the show may be that it presents a gay couple as a loving and caring family.  And even more horrifying, they are raising a child together.  What can be worse for the family values crowd than showing a loving and caring family raising a child when the family is not a family of which they approve.  OMG, the next thing this may lead to is showing an interracial family with an Asian child.  Oh the horror!

And in case anyone is wondering the show is on ABC, a network owned by that communistic, atheistic, socialistic, godless heathen of a company, The Walt Disney Corporation. 

So feel free Mr. Hatch to tune it out, after all everyone else is going to tune you out.  And if you are still concerned about obscenity on TV well there’s a whole network, not just one show, that you can turn your censorious attention to.  Yep, Fox News is out there just waiting for your wrath.