This about sums it up for me as far as censorship goes.
When Chef Ramsey says 'fuck' (something he does roughly as often as inhaling and pissing off the owners and staff of failing restaurants) and the network replaces it with 'beeeep,' it's not as if anyone watching doesn't know he said 'fuck.' They practically hear it, imagine it in that moment.
What the beep is supposed to do is enforce community standards of decency. In the case of the FCC, they seem to think the entire United States is an impossibly prudish community, a monolithic audience with an appetite strictly for G-rated fair.
In reality, the ratings of lurid, violent, sexist and vulgarity laced TV shows reveal that a big part of this 'community,' arguably an overwhelming majority, holds to a decency standard closer to Larry Flynt than to the Flintstones.
America doesn't just tolerate the titillating, we crave it. I include myself in that 'we.' I'm not saying we should do nothing to steer our young children away from this stuff; but the FCC and the MPAA isn't just a flawed system, it's about as effective as a 'bleep' at preventing a viewer from knowing when an f-bomb is dropped.
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