Mark Harmon \nTUPELO, MS - Mark Harmon's Chicago Hope character uttered "Shit happens", uncensored, on the most recent episode of the CBS medical drama - and, sure enough, the shit hit the fan. The American Family Association has filed an official complaint against a CBS affiliate in Columbus, Mississippi, and has also asked for a Federal Communications Commission investigation for violation of decency laws.
AFA National Field Director David Miller says CBS violated broadcast laws by allowing Harmon's character to say the phrase uncensored, describing something going awry with a surgical procedure.
This is probably the first time the word has been used on network television deliberately. The Associated Press says CBS and Chicago Hope spokesmen could not remember any previous time censors had allowed the word, though the show's executive producer also says it wasn't anything "I haven't tried a couple of times before, except this time, I won."
The FCC defines indecent language as "language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary standards for the broadcast medium sexual or excretory organs or activities." Miller says the Harmon phrase during prime time meets the FCC's definition.
Court rulings say indecency - as opposed to downright obscenity - is protected by the First Amendment. But the same courts say indecency may be restricted, including in ways that bar broadcasting of indecent material when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience, such as 6:00am to 10:00pm.
AFA thinks CBS - no strangers to pushing the envelope, as recall such fare as All in the Family in 1970 - was simply testing FCC limits with the Chicago Hope scene. And the watchdog group says it can't see how any claim of artistic truthfulness, as CBS claims, has a thing to do with vulgarity.
"Most people can go to the grocer, cleaners, restaurant, gas station, work, or wherever and never hear that word," Miller says. "But CBS and Chicago's producers are so jaded that they think their viewers need that word to grasp 'the full embodiment of the episode,' Miller quipped. "We shouldn't have to go to the toilet bowl for our vocabulary to understand an evening television show."
