YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN : On Network Television, Some Words Speak Louder Than Other Words

I’m still not sure whether Jimmy Connors fever ever afflicted anyone except the middle-aged media operatives in New York who kept running with the story last month. But, spurious or not, the premise that much of America was spellbound by Jimbo led to a breakthrough television moment.

It was a Friday night, and Ted Koppel just couldn’t shake the sense that the country’s sudden love affair with the aging tennis brat had profound sociological implications. He found four or five different ways of saying that Connors was unusually old to be playing top-level tennis. And then, to hammer the point home, he observed that it brought hope to “every old fart in the country.” I thought I might be the only person who heard him say it. But, soon enough, after four commercials and one promo, Ted asked a question of Roger Rosenblatt, a journalist of some repute who was one of the evening’s guests, and before Rosenblatt answered, he said, “You did use the phrase ‘old fart,’ didn’t you, Ted?” If a man can look proud and embarrassed simultaneously, that’s how Koppel looked.

With the exception of Arthur Ashe, who retained his poise throughout the proceedings, everybody on the program took advantage of the newly opened door. The phrase was repeated at least four times during the rest of the show. Trying to regain control at the end of the broadcast, Koppel said he hoped that “we succeeded in saying Jimmy Connors’ name more often than we said old fart .”

It was breakthrough network television, and, like so much breakthrough network television, it was cute. It was a throwback to the era when the word pregnant couldn’t be said on the air. And yet, the age we really live in is full of movies and records with stuff that would make Jimmy Connors blush.

What this incident tells us is that television is not just far removed from “real life,” it’s equally distant from the rest of popular culture. The people in network television are giggly about their momentary freedom to use the world’s tamest f-word. Meanwhile, the rest of us cringe as megawatt car stereos blast the m-f-word with the studied repetition usually reserved for the name of a line of jeanswear.

Connors won the week in terms of pushing the envelope, but he didn’t even come close to the champ in breaking down the censorship of language in mainstream media. Richard Nixon--who also knows a thing or two about foreign policy, bub--was the only reason that a still-amazing array of profanities was printed and broadcast. His press secretary, Ronald Ziegler, for example, once compared the feeling of contrition to the slang word for male bovine solid waste. That quote made it into many newspapers, including this one. And yet this publication’s entertainment section remains so prim that a local band can be referred to only as the B.H. Surfers (they’re not from Beverly Hills).

The Federal Communications Commission years ago abandoned any requirement that broadcasters, licensed to use the “public airwaves,” put on anything informative at any time. Now the FCC trains its regulatory guns on seven naughty words. You probably can’t lose your license anymore for evading limits on commercial time, but you probably can lose your license for airing one f-word (or two s-words, or a combination of two c-words and one s-word). Network TV, facing competition from unlicensed cable libertines, has begun flirting with the less-blatant vulgarities. Last season, the breakthrough word was sucks. This year, oddsmakers favor butt. It’s already the most-mentioned body part on Fox.

Grown-ups occasionally find blunt language useful, usually when a lover or boss acts like a perfect f-word-head. But the hypocritical hypercleanliness imposed on our media (the movies just succeeded in throwing off the yoke before TV has) tempts adolescents to react by using profanity more often than Walter Keane used big eyes. And a lot of our culture is adolescent. The FCC’s mentality is a direct lift from the people who think television is governed not by greed and fear but by Satan. But it’s not particularly inspiring that immediate repeal of those restrictions would just guarantee us an extremely salty season of “American Gladiators.”

Ted Koppel and his middle-aged guests could only marvel at Jimmy Connors’ temporary retrieval of youth. But for a half-hour, they could relive at least that part of their own youths when they discovered how much fun it is to swear. The moral guardians of the airwaves are just lucky that Richard Nixon never played pro tennis.