$#*! WTF?!

Ok, so Twitter. I know it exists. I have very little use for it. The bands I’m interested in don’t use it. The “news” organizations that do tweet make the best use of it that they can I suppose. I’m just typically around a TV or computer whenever I want to catch up on the news. Maybe one day there’ll be a catastrophe. Maybe one day I’ll be out for a stroll, nary a laptop or mobile device in sight, and the Chevy Volts are spontaneously going kablooie and it’s unsafe to be any closer than 600 feet to one, let alone accept a ride in one, and maybe on that day I’ll wish I’d been following CNN. And my friends, to my knowledge, don’t use it. One asshat acquaintance does use Twitter, doddering on and on about himself. @AnnoyingDouche, I don’t care that the new Cantina tacos at Taco Bell “can’t compare to the authentic ones in TJ!”, nor that you believe that “Arcade Fire has yet to hit its prime!” So, what use have I?

None.

However, I do not live under a rock. I have been aware for some time of the Twitter feed, Shit My Dad Says. I don’t follow, but I get the premise. Guy, 29, lives with his dad, and tweets the misanthropic gems that come out of his mouth. Here’s a sample: “I lost 20 pounds…How? I drank bear piss and took up fencing. How the fuck you think, son? I exercised.” Stop and ponder for a minute how much better off we’d be had we all been raised by dads like this. I can tell you one thing. There’d be no Justin Bieber let loose on the Earth. Of that much, I am sure. Here’s another: “You seen my cell phone?…What’s it look like? Like two horses fucking. It’s a phone, son. It looks like a phone.” This stuff is actually funny.

Here’s where it stops being funny.

CBS picks up this premise for a new show. I don’t know that that’s ever happened before. A pitch for a prime time show for a major network in 140 characters or less. Look, I know that Hollywood is desperate for ideas. We seem to be mired in ironic, tongue-in-cheek remakes of average material from the 80s, repetitive sing and dance competitions, and stab-me-in-the-eyes musicals. So, I can really appreciate that someone had the good sense to even consider Twitter as a potential source of material. I imagine some nineteen year old up-and-comer brings this to the higher ups, designs a slick Powerpoint presentation around a couple of the tweets and, not having a frame of reference for anything pre-1984, says, “I’m thinking, like, a young Ashton Kutcher type for the son, and maybe, oh I don’t know, maybe a, like, a Seinfeld type for the dad.” The suits mull it for about thirty seconds, and reply, “How about Bill Shatner?” The kid, he has no clue who that is, but he looks them dead in the eyes, smiles and says, “Funny, I was about to say Bill next.” They congratulate each other on working this one up good. The old guys have filled one more thirty minute slot, the kid gets an office, and this thing is on.

But now we got a problem. What the hell do we call this thing. Listen, we’re CBS. We’re not going to trot out a show called “Shit My Dad Says.” Do you know what kind of a field day Glenn Beck is going to have with that? But, the kid, he’s all hip to the internet. Real savvy, this one. So he sends out an email, and he suggests “$#*! My Dad Says.” Well, holy shit. The guys in charge run this by their ultracool teenagers to make sure that all the kids know this new internet shorthand, and when Rumour, Badge, Chazz, Isis, Safari, Silver, Mojo, and Moxie can all decode these symbols this thing has got the green light.

The following Monday they give the kid the keys to the blowjob room and he probably gets a producer credit on the show.

So, we’re gold. Well hold on, because there’s one group that hasn’t yet weighed in. The Parents Television Council. Yep. I’m sure that there was more than the average wailing and gnashing of teeth on the day they learned of this new show. But, surely they’re not brain-dead. There’s no way that anyone seriously believed that CBS was going to air a show called “SHIT My Dad Says,” was there? I don’t know, because they only came out of the woodwork all up in arms about $#*!. That’s right. They actually got their panties in a wad over the symbols that were used in place of the actual word. Further, PTC President Tim Winter expressed outrage over the fact that “CBS intentionally chose to insert an expletive into the actual name of a show, and, despite its claim that the word will be bleeped, it is just CBS’ latest demonstration of its contempt for families and the public.”

So let me try and get my head around this. Is it that the symbols used in place of the word, and the bleeping of the spoken word are too much together? Is it that anybody who’s been alive on the planet for more than two years will be able to effortlessly decode that and understand that the sneaky, subversive CBS really means “shit,” and having successfully placed that idea in the heads of a few million people that this fragile society we’ve built will collapse in on itself. Is not thinking “shit,” let alone not saying it the linchpin to this whole thing? Is it that “shit” is a gateway word? And if this one gets by, our kids are going to hear “tits” on Spongebob, and our wives will learn of the “alligator fuckhouse” on The View? What’s got Tim Winter all hot and bothered?

Because he warns, “The PTC will wage an unrelenting campaign against every network advertiser that chooses to support this program; and in this instance, we will wage an unrelenting campaign against every local advertiser sponsoring the program at the affiliate station level.”

He goes on to say, “We will challenge the broadcast license of every network affiliate that chooses to air the program before 10 pm or that chooses to air a promotion of the program before 10 pm.”

FYI, The Federal Communications Commission allows for more mature programming to be broadcast from 10 pm to 6 am.

Meanwhile, CBS gets all this free controversy and publicity for a show that, in all probability, will suck. I mean, come on, it’s CBS. They will completely rip all of the humor out of this premise. They’ll have to. The language, the way this guy talks, the way a LOT of us talk, is what’s funny. And as much as I’d like to see it, you cannot put that shit on CBS at 8:30 on a Thursday night.

In fact, the emasculation of the show has already begun. CBS insists that the title of the show is read as “Bleep My Dad Says.” Odds are, they’ll probably just drop this charade closer to the air date, and that will become the actual title of the show.

So there we are. Unable to say the word. Unable to print the mnemonic substitute. You know who would really have a field day with this shit?

You are missed, George.