• NotWearingPants
    +3

    The time slot will likely mitigate the fine that is coming, but broadcast television has always had tighter standards than cable. There isn't a slope here, there's a hard line and Colbert crossed it. There is no 1A argument about political speech where obscenity on public airways comes into the picture.

    I'm sure no one would have been offended if a late night host said the same thing about the previous president. (Hint: The MSM would have melted down and the host would have been fired before the end of the show).

    But at least the left finds homosexual jokes amusing again. At least when they tell them about someone they don't like. But again, there is a line there. On one side of it is humor, The other is naked hatred. That diatribe wasn't about being funny.

    He really should have been more careful with what he was spewing out of his cock-holster.

    • AdelleChattre
      +5

      As they would’ve said on The Daily Show once, he won’t get so much of a fine, as much as it’ll really be more like an “after-fee.” Then he can go right back to spewing baseless, meaningless. vulgar, vitriol to the demented amusement of his studio audience. The shame is, he was capable of so much more. Like so many comedians, he was desperate for the laughs and didn’t know when to stop. He could so easily have risen above the pussy grabber, rather than descending to meet him.

      • leweb
        +5

        That's the thing, my point is that if you're watching him you're kind of asking for it. It's like an homophobe going to a gay wedding and then asking the government to forbid gay marriage because he was offended. This was no surprise.

        • AdelleChattre
          +4

          I was surprised CBS televised that expression. We’re talking about a country that had a collective conniption fit about an accidentally exposed nipple at the Superbowl.

        • NotWearingPants
          +4

          No one was asking for obscenity.

          Tune the wayback machine to the mid 80s. WNBC 660AM (Now WFAN) radio out of NYC had Don Imus and Howard Stern. They were funny, witty, and pushed the envelope on what you could say and do on broadcast radio. They pushed each other to be more outrageous. and occasionally slipped over the line and got fined. Their producers didn't really care because their advertising numbers were insane.

          Because there were no real consequences, they went over the line more often, the fines got bigger, and they were eventually both fired when the advertisers dropped out. They weren't funny any more, it was all 12 year-old bathroom humor.

          I watch Colbert, I expect him to be funny. I expect his political leaning to flavor and direct his monologue. Criticism and lampooning his political opponents has always been his schtick. I don't expect obscenity. That's not cool on broadcast television.

          Be careful in defending it or even being comfortable with it, because you are going to see the other side latch on to it, just like with "deplorables". Are you going to be fine when the next time Nancy Pelosi starts babbling something incoherent (seriously, is she channeling Ozzy Osbourne, auditioning for the "authentic frontier gibberish" part in a Blazing Saddles remake, has she had a stroke, or is she just perpetually drunk?) will the meme that she needs to shut her cock-holster be ok? The same, shouted out at a Clinton or Obama public appearance?

          Or will that be vulgar, offensive, and classless?

        • leweb
          +3
          @NotWearingPants -

          If she does it on tv at midnight I don't see a problem. Also, I honestly wouldn't care either if he threw obscenity at Clinton, or Obama, or the Pope, or whichever public figure you can think of. It's part of being a public figure, and I think that both doing it and taking it seriously are silly. The appropriate response would just be to not watch his show, not give him free publicity by making a lot of noise about it.

          On the other hand, I never watch tv, so that might be part of the reason why I don't see a problem :)

        • leweb
          +4
          @AdelleChattre -

          That's another thing I never understood about American TV. Showing a breast, which is a perfectly natural, non-offensive thing, is scandalous, but showing a guy with a machine gun killing people is ok. Can't make sense of it.

        • AdelleChattre
          +4
          @leweb -

          Violence in Generica is fine as a rule, especially deranged, psychotic violence. Bonus points for fiery explosions and elaborate plotting. Sex in Generican culture is only allowed in proportion to however badly the wars are going. The current eight wars Generica is involved in are — wait, what's the culturally-acceptable doubletalk for unwinnable quagmires? — 'critical' and 'fluid' right now so there is a consensus permissiveness about sex at the moment. Should we go into double-digit ongoing, simultaneous wars I would expect there to be a spate of new television shows involving on-air nudity and/or near-sex acts.

        • leweb
          +3
          @AdelleChattre -

          I think I get it even less now.

      • NotWearingPants
        +2

        Couldn't have said it better.