November 6-12, 2008
editorial@boulderweekly.com

Every time you say the F-word, God kills a kitten
While U.S. voters were busy deciding the future of the free world, what was the U.S. Supreme Court doing? Discussing “indiscreet language.” That’s right. The nation’s hallowed halls of justice focused Tuesday on a few random uses of the word “fuck” dating back as far as 2002.

On one side of this First Amendment case stands Fox Television together with Bono, Cher and Nicole Ritchie. On the other stands a group of religious wingnuts who believe the welfare of American families is at risk every time a rock star or actor drops an F-bomb on TV.

Let’s review these indiscretions, shall we?
In 2002, Cher won a Billboard award and said, “I’ve also had critics for the last 40 years saying that I was on my way out every year. Right. So fuck ’em! I still have a job, and they don’t.” Who could forget such an outrage! (Oh, yeah. Everybody.)

The very next year, Bono used the F-word when accepting a Golden Globe Award, which he referred to as “really, really fucking brilliant.” (Probably people died because of this, but no one’s really sure.)

That same year, Nicole Ritchie accepted a Billboard award, saying, “It’s not so fucking simple to remove cow shit out of a Prada purse.” (That’s fuck and shit! Quick! Hide the children!)

FCC officials initially ruled that these were isolated incidents of profanity that did not merit punishment for the TV network.

Then the full FCC reversed that ruling, under pressure from groups like Morality and the Media and the Family Research Council, the apparent mission of which is to wash the entire nation’s mouth out with soap.

“The welfare of America, its families and its youth will be detrimentally affected by electronic mass communications which contain unrestrained indecency, whether in language or imagery,” the National Religious Broadcasters warned in one legal brief.

So no matter what you heard about the economy or pre-emptive wars or the health-care crisis, the future of the American family depends on keeping celebrities from cussing on the air. Shit! Like that’s going to happen!

Top 10 things Palin will be doin’ after Nov. 4
Boulder Weekly turned to local political analyst Thom Hill to give some insight to how Gov. Sarah Palin, former vice presidential candidate, might spend the coming week. Here’s what he had to say:
10. Beggin’ Tina Fey to “do me again, do me again.”
9. Tryin’ to get one of her subordinates to fire that Obama guy.
8. Consolin’ her eldest daughter when her fiancé bolts after the McCain campaign tells him he doesn’t have to marry the girl after all.
7. Servin’ as the Official Spokesperson for the State of Nevada, “You Betcha!”
6. Sellin’ homemade moose jerky on the Bridge to Nowhere.
5. Joinin’ the Fox News team as an energy and foreign policy analyst. (Seriously.)
4. Havin’ surgery to repair her eye socket, damaged from excessive winkin’.
3. Sellin’ all the “gs” she’s dropped from the end of words on eBay.
2. Finally utterin’ a complete, intelligible sentence: “Whaddya mean we lost, John?”
1. Takin’ a rowboat to Russia.

Catch the real sex offenders
Last week, B-dub’s In Case You Missed It lamented that a certain local teen who got busted streaking at the Fairview/Boulder game didn’t wait till the Naked Pumpkin Run to bare it and book. We said that if he had waited, he’d have been able to run through downtown Boulder nude — without getting arrested.

Seems we were wrong. D’oh!
For 10 years now, Boulder has been the home of the annual Naked Pumpkin Run, in which free-spirited folks put carved pumpkins over their heads and run naked down the Pearl Street Mall without getting busted. But apparently genitals are more indecent this year than at any time during the past decade.

For the first time ever, the cops showed up en masse and arrested a dozen of the more than 100 participants, who risked chilly temps and the resulting shrinkage for a good laugh. One local paper reported that, if convicted, these folks would have to register as sex offenders — a possibility that outrages most citizens of Boulder, who like their weird little town where things like non-sexual, non-threatening nudity are occasionally accepted.

“Sex offender” is a title that should be reserved for people like the four men who gang-raped a woman just a few blocks away from the Naked Pumpkin Run less than a week prior — rapists that the Boulder Police Department has, so far, been unable to catch.

Maybe if the cops spent less time ticketing people for silly offenses, they’d have more time to catch the real sex offenders. Just a thought.
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