Four weeks ago, I watched Dancing With The Stars for the first time. Last week, I watched Dancing With The Stars for the last time. This epic 4-week DWTS viewing binge coincided with comedian and radio show host Adam Carolla’s stint, which ended last Tuesday after he and his professional dance partner, two-time defending DWTS champ Julianne Hough, were eliminated from the televised dance competition.
I’ve enjoyed listening to Adam Carolla for a while now, since he served as co-host on the late-night radio call-in program Loveline with Dr. Drew Pinsky. Although Carolla’s an atheist and can be quite huffy and offensive, he can also be funny and amusing on occasion in a curmudgeonly sort of way. Just like Henry (except for the “funny and amusing” part). Because Carolla was on DWTS, I watched it.
Carolla agreed to appear on DWTS in order to promote his independent movie The Hammer, and he and his dancing partner Julianne couldn’t have been any more different. She is a very blonde 19-year old international dance champion, who originated from Utah, studied dance in London for a number of years, and is now an aspiring country music singer. She has been likened to “the head of all head cheerleaders,” Everyone’s Kid Sister, and America’s Mormon Sweetheart. And she can toss a mean knuckle ball. (It “dances”…)
On the other hand, Carolla’s an atheistic former carpenter/boxing instructor from the San Fernando Valley, who once co-hosted The Man Show with Jimmy Kimmel. He’s been variously described as an uglier version of Elliott Gould, as well as a Pete Sampras lookalike (if Sampras had Down’s Syndrome). He also sports a unibrow.
Clearly, this was a match made in purgatory. Or Kolob.
On last week’s show, a shocking incident occurred. While the judges were commenting on Adam and Julianne’s fourth and final dance (Out of the way…here comes the paso doble!), Carolla interjected, “I want to thank the wardrobe department for dressing me up like a silent [film] porn star…” (He wore a Zorro outfit, complete with a porn ‘stache, cape, and black mask.) Julianne’s here-we-go-again reaction to his comment found her covering her face with her hand and exclaiming something to the effect of “Oh, sh—.”
It’s not clear what Julianne actually said because, after the “sh—” came out of her mouth, the rest of the word got dumped. The ABC censor must have stepped in because he thought that America’s Mormon Sweetheart had just dropped an S-Bomb on live television.
Rioting nearly broke out in Salt Lake City, and the rest of Utah (as well as parts of Idaho, Arizona, and Nevada) almost went up in flames. Hearing sweet, little LDS princess Julianne curse—maybe—was shocking. She might as well have strangled a drifter (or better yet Carolla) to death with her bare hands on live TV.
The next evening, on Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show—which, coincidentally, often runs a bit called “This Week In Unnecessary Censorship”—Julianne explained that she had actually said “Oh, shoot,” and not the euphemism for poo-poo. Apparently, the censor on duty that evening was just a tad bit trigger-happy with the dump button. So everyone in Utah can relax now…
What networks should do instead of just dumping potentially offensive words is to bleep them out. And customize the bleep with a sound unique to each individual television market. Why? Because I need more pizazz in my censorship. Censorship goes down better with a little bit of flair. For example, in San Francisco, whenever someone curses, you’d hear a fog horn. In Wisconsin, you’d hear a cow moo. In Salt Lake City, you’d hear the sound of trumpet, probably the one being blown by the angel Moroni on top of all those LDS temples. In Texas, you’d hear a gunshot. In New York City, curse words uttered will be replaced by…another curse word! The same for LA, except with Spanish curse words.
You get the idea.