It will be interesting to see if anything really happens. Different rules have always been applied to PBS in the past. I still remember, rather vividly, watching a topless Diana Rigg in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, back in the late 1960s.

And while they have never run anything like what you'd get on HBO, I've certainly heard more than a few of George Carlin's famous seven words.

My bet is that, given the subject matter, they'll be given a pass. Even if someone at the FCC wants to make "a Federal case" out of TV indecency, this would be a stupid case to pick because it won't get any traction politically.

My guess this is more about the continued conservative tear down of PBS and not the utterance of expletives.

Brings to mind some of the war stories told to me by my uncle who was in Patton's 3rd army. He rarely used foul language when telling them I think because all the family members were present. Some examples---during the relief of Bastone Patton's 3rd was rolling for 48 hrs with everybody shnocked on congac (cases strapped to the outside of the tanks) a civilian car got caught up in the column and wouldn't get out of the way so they just rolled right over it, civilian and all squashed like stepping on a coke can---they used to set up frozen German dead soldiers to sit on them to eat their rations so they wouldn't have to sit in the snow---one day after grinding up a cow in an abandoned meat processing facility with a jeep jacked up and the wheel fastened to the grinder with an old belt they would ride a bicycle past a point of where a German sniper was located as fast as they could and see if they could make it, just for laughs and everybody took turns---after capturing German soldiers and bringing them back to the front lines the officer would tell them to "get rid of them". No problem.
Wonder why combat affects peoples outlook on life and maybe their use of language expletives.
In the 1990's I sent a letter to Stephen Spielberg that he should make a combat movie the way it really was but the answer I got (on gold leaf emblems on the paper) was that they were not allowed to use my suggestions or ideas. A few years later "Saving Private Ryan" was released.
JJK

that they were not allowed to use my suggestions or ideas.

That's SOP with any company, and has been for a long time. Too many people come out of the woodwork when a product (or movie) is successful and claim it was "their" idea.

For instance, I have a business plan I wrote in the early 1990s (this is true) that describes how to build a video recorder from a personal computer and a large disk drive, with the main benefit being the ability to play the video while still recording and thus be able to "pause live TV." This was three years before TiVo ever announced anything. Of course, I never did anything with the plan except show it to a few people, but the point is that people with a different value system often see something like this as an opportunity to rob the successful company (hard to characterize it more charitably).

Oh, and the comment about wanting to dismantle PBS is correct as to what the Republican party would like to do with PBS (although I doubt it is high on the priority list at the moment). However, I doubt this would give them much ammunition to do much of anything. They have far, far more effective ways to achieve their objective. The smartest thing would be to sell it, the way the Federal Government often sells other assets. Put it up for bid and let the folks that own A&E or Bravo, etc. buy it. There is a huge market for the shows PBS has produced, and it could easily be a subscriber channel on cable (so it could still be commercial free) and bring in lots of money. It would change over time under the new management, but then again, as I think about what PBS was like when I was growing up in Chicago (WTTW), what we have today bears zero resemblance to that programming.

After Saving Private Ryan came out it sort of became "hip" if you had been involved in D-Day. My Uncle was there - and he played it really well. Each year he would get in all the local media telling how it was and when he died his funeral was covered. This is it was a joke - yeah he landed on the beach. he got off, peed his pants, fell face down on the neach and held his hand up until he got hit. he did not want to fight, he wanted to be wounded. Course that part never was told in the media - only that he had gotten wounded during D-Day.

On the other hand another Uncle has never talked about the war yet he was a real hero. He ran to pull a downed pilot out of a burning plane, got the medal of honor for it. Yet he never ever says anything about the war. No media, no press.

Johnmeyer, I too share the memory of Diana Rigg. Perhaps even more vivid is the memory of a nearly nude Judy Dench as Titania in the same production. Just a couple of garlands of (well placed?) ivy, as I recall. Dame Judy's come a long way since then.

Jack

My uncle was in the Battle of the Bulge and only talked about it twice, only briefly. It was hand-to-hand, and bloody hell.

My parent's generation did some amazingly difficult things.

filmy, johnmeyer - I can relate. My brother (19 years my senior) is a decorated Vet of Vietnam. He went through things I still don't know about, he's never really talked about it. Only one brief phone conversation last year (we're becoming closer as we get older), he related an incident where he had to jump up to a helicopter that was lifting off, while returning fire to the enemy charging behind him. To this day he keeps a list of men that were lost in his platoon. Some of those that survived did so because of his actions.

Memorial Day means an awful lot to him, and to our family. As it should to all Americans.

On the other hand, my dad was in WW2. Only stories I've heard were about swabbing the deck and drinking beer.

My Dad was in the Royal Armoured Corps in WWII but hardly told us anything, except that he never collected the medals he could have, because a comrade cut his hand opening a tin of corned beef, and because this meant passing back from the front line to the medical base with an injury, he automatically was awarded a medal.

My other uncle ( I had many of them) was assigned to drive fuel trucks and was in the invasion on Omaha Beach. He was on a smaller ship in a cluster of 5 ships and 4 of them were blown away, all except his. While awaiting orders on the beach until the invasion was complete the bodies were being processed---stacked up 6 ft high in a line 1.5 miles long. (Sometimes he would say 6 miles long) I don't recall seeing this in "Saving Private Ryan" however. The first years back after being discharged my uncles would drink a fifith of booze per day like we drink water, then slowly got away from that and switched to beer. And then when they would fly off the handle everyone would just say "that's the war talkin", and just ignore them. There wern't many "stress experts" around that time. They all faired well in the long run though.
JJK

Wow - this started as a Ken Burns thread, but contains so many messages for the World which say - don't believe the propoganda about war - listen to the reality.

There are so many inadequately developed humans making decisions which affect us all - when are the real people going to take over?

when are the real people going to take over?

That has already happened, thank goodness, because there are real people who are really trying to kill us. Really.