ight is hardly the sport of wrestling. Rather than the old myth of good and evil, we now see just the evil. The "Buried Alive" match where one wrestler shovels dirt onto his opponent who was whacked in the head with a sledgehammer pretty much says it all. Its not really wrestling; its a brawl (Graydon, 1999). TV writers contend that rude language on TV is not any worse than one might hear in day-to-day life. Networks have pushed toward a new freedom to use formerly taboo words and phrases such as "ass", "sucks", "piss off" and "get laid" and "screw you", along with the traditional "damn" and "hell". A recent premiere on Fox TV opened with a character using the F-word six times in the first minute (bleeped, of course). Bleeps don't even try hard to hide what's really being said. Television is swearing as loud as it can to get people's attention (Aucoin, 1999). TV writers argue that using adult language is merely being faithful to the way people talk. There is a real world ever-escalating vulgarity factor, with the recent presidential sex scandal news reports leading the way. TV writers feel that viewers would not have even noticed if the Associated Press hadnt run an article in advance pointing it out (Pennington, 1999). The "f" word, for the time being, remains off-limits, although lip readers can see it everywhere. Even of sporting events, when a golfer misses a putt, you know what hes saying. Network TV recently purposefully ventured far into the dirty-word territory in an entertainment show. The response was, according to CBS, that the station received three phone calls, no faxes or email messages from viewers(McGuire, 1999). If public opinion is that indifferent, profanity on network TV could become as commonplace as it is in the movies. Rather than thinking TV has reached new lows in sexual content, some think that it is simply just catching up with a new cultural sexual permissiveness. Ratings show that viewers don't seem to min...
