The story goes something like this, and I'm sure you've heard it: media censors such as the MPAA and FCC have at times been widely accused of exerting double standards when it comes to censoring the twin evils of sex and violence. And there is merit to this position. It is true that there is seemingly one standard for how much sex and nudity can be in a film or television show, and another standard for violence.

Death offscreen, is always ok. It passes muster with all the censors. Even death onscreen is largely ok if it is bloodless, and relatively short. Man gets shot in the chest in a scene that lasts less than 3 seconds. This type of thing can easily find its way into a PG film. With animation, it's even more lax. I saw a man accidentally hang himself in Tarzan! Things are allowed to get pretty violent in a G or PG rated animated film, but they aren't allowed to get naked. Such is the hypocrisy, or so critics such as Roger Ebert assert.

And these critics are utterly right and astute in their observation of censorship hypocrisy. I've counted Arnold Schwarzenegger kill just about 100 people in Commando, an R rated film, but a group of people having sex from a medium distanced shot in Eyes Wide Shut is NC-17, basically the rating given to pornography. Isn't it illogical and silly for censorship boards to hold these double standards? Yes, of course. Any idiot can see that. Why is it so traumatic for a child to deal with the depiction or even suggestion of natural, biologically necessary sex? Why do the censor boards seem to think it's less traumatic for anyone to deal with depraved, violent murder?

Let's remember that the main purpose of this legal censorship was and should be, to shield minors from very harmful influences. Obviously censorship then rests on the assumption that these various media influence children. One doesn't even have to buy this assumption, but if one does, he has to buy the assumption for every type of possible influence media can generate.

What sort of influence can a sexually explicit film exert on a young mind? What will happen? Will it cause that young person to go out and have sex? Maybe. Won't he have sex eventually anyway? What will a violent film do to a young mind? Will it cause that person to go on a killing rampage? Probably not, but for purely selfish reasons I'd much rather that kid go out and have sex than conduct a murderous romp in my neighborhood with an AK-47 he found in his lunchbox.

I think I've made my point sufficiently. It's utterly ridiculous to hold such a rigid standard on sex without holding an equally rigid standard on violence. Nor am I calling for a more rigid set of standards on media violence. Honestly, I'd love it if I could watch pornography and Commando uncensored on network television. But if there is censorship, let it have fair and equal standards.

This brings us to the real point of my rant, which has less to do with sex and violence than you might believe. You see, this debate is actually a fairly tired one. It's not new. The double standard has been there for some time and anyone who cares to, has noticed it. My real gripe is neither sex nor violence. I'm pretty satisfied with how much sex and violence I can see in an average film. My personal gripe, is with language.

Language. The most ignored, despised, underappreciated, shunned and oppressed of all "things that are censored." Foul language has been so effectively downtrodden and suppressed that it's a gigantic deal when Madonna uses it on network television.

This is censorship of the worst sort! Well, besides political censorship, but after that it is censorship of the worst sort! And everyone just seems satisfied to let it occur. What happened to the vaunted individual liberties we cherish in the free world? Don't you know that people swim from Cuba to Miami for these rights? That and multimillion dollar baseball contracts of course.

Language, specifically the terms "fuck" and "shit" are quite taboo on television and film. I'm not sure, but I believe using either term more than once will land any film in the R category. It's hard to say with the MPAA's largely mysterious, haphazard and arbitrary criteria. The MPAA once demanded that the makers of the film American Pie reduce the number of times a teenager thrusts his penis into a baked pie in order to reduce the rating from NC-17 to R. The number of thrusts?

Part of the problem with language is that it's concrete. A filmmaker has no option to get around the censorship of a certain word. It's too easy to censor these terms. It's not as easy for a censor to attack vague descriptions such as "gratuitous sex" or "gratuitous violence." Take the film Titanic for example. There was some breast action going on in that film. Just a couple seconds, but it was there nevertheless. Somehow Titanic got away with a PG-13. Suitable for kids 13 and over. If however, the film happened to use the term "fuck" a couple more times, it would probably have been an R film. Not suitable for children under 17. Coincidentally, the film alluded to some literal fucking in the backseat of a car. Sure the windows were fogged up, but I guarantee that the typical 13 year old understood what was happening.

So what is the deal here? We can have people fucking, but they can't say "fuck?"

I'm going to reveal a personal bias right now. I love to cuss. I especially adore the term, "fuck." I'm absolutely in love with it. My relationship with the word "fuck" began when I was but an earnest child. Actually I don't even fucking remember when or how it began, but boy do I love "fuck."