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Even with the chyron caveat, Stephen Colbert was disinclined to saySchitts Creek.
He said the show or your show and let Levy invoke the chyron.
It got me thinking about cursing.
Namely, why the fuck cant people swear on late night?
Its past watershed, and most people watch it the next day on YouTube anyway.
Lord knows you could say any fucking thing on there.
Samantha Bee is bleeped on TBS, but theFull FrontalYouTube channel leaves in everyfeckless cunt.
Bee has been promoting her upcomingNot the White House Correspondents Dinneron YouTube with swear-laced roasts of former presidents.
If the presidents were as thick-skinned as the friars, this is what the WHCD would look like.
The clips juxtapose Bee in full period dress with her foul mouth.
Women did not speak like that in the 70s.
Not professionally, at least.
The swearing is strategic.
Cathartic (Fuck, that hurts!)
Dysphemistic (Thats fucking nasty.)
Emphatic (Fucking pay attention!)
Idiomatic (Were fucking bros, dude.)
Peers who have copulated.
But when she says sex with Kissinger was gross because hes a fucking troll, thats dysphemistic.
On her show, Bee deploys a lot of emphatic swearing.
Its become a convention of politics, and thus political comedy shows.
Its partially a class issue.
Fancy motherfuckers dont swear, but the good people of Detroit do.
Any impression of John Oliver should start with something like Thats fucking unbelievable!
then compare an issue of federal policy with the shitty behavior of a roommate or perhaps Snooki.
HBO lets Oliver swear (and TBS lets Bee swear on YouTube)becauseits emphatic.
Were talking about serious shit, so the cursing lends fucking gravitas.
Adults are freaking the fuck out, and so should your dumb ass.
But there are some lines even Oliver cannot cross.
Apparently, you cant use footage of Parliament on a comedy show in Britain.
It would appear that boy titty is acceptable on the Beeb.
Boy titty is acceptable on CBS, too, in ways the wordsSchitts Creekare not.
Weve moved beyond profanity and into obscenity now.
The borders of what is and is not acceptable on TV tell you a lot about a culture.
But onThe Late Late Show, we got comedic boy titty and erotic boy titty.
I dont think anyones supposed to look at an underwear-clad Noah Centineo and lol.
So the shunning of womens nips as ticking time bombs of eroticism is arbitrary at best.
And thats whats at the heart of this swearing issue: Words are basically meaningless.
We live in a consensus-based reality, and the consensus is breaking down.
Like a swear, the made-up word was deployed emphatically to highlight the stupidity of the argument.
If a procedure is outlined in the Constitution, its by definition not a coup.
I say this emphatically and dysphemistically: That argument is fucking stupid.
Every word is a relationship between the person saying it and the person hearing it.
Everyone has to agree on what that word means, or the whole endeavor breaks down.
