Love letter to a TV censor

Dear TLC Censor:

The other day, I was watching a show on The Learning Channel called Moving Up. It's that show where people move to a new house and remodel/redecorate it, then invite the former owners back to mercilessly trash their new design choices. It's catty, nasty stuff, and as your typical American viewer, of course I totally love it.

Anyway, that morning's episode featured a deliciously trashy, chain-smoking, f-bombing Jersey Shore-type couple. They were sniping at each other like something out of a bad Saturday Night Live skit. I imagine you must have contracted a terrible case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome while trying to bleep out all of the foulness flying from their obnoxious mouths:

SHE: There's no [BLEEEEEEEEEEEEP] way you're gonna put that lavender [BLEEEEEEEEP] in my bedroom. It's [BLEEEEEEEEEEEP]!

HE: No, you're the [BLEEEEEEEEEP]. The black [BLEEEEEEP] paint is a [BLEEEEEEEP] nightmare!"

SHE: [BLEEEP] you, you [BLEEEEP]!

HE: No! [BLEEEP] YOU!!

And so on. The stuff of Emmy Awards? Not so much. But if there were an award for excellence in censorship, it would definitely go to you.

I was astonished when I realized that one of the main words that you were bleeping out that morning was one I'd never seen censored before. In my community of special-needs parents, we call it the R-word (I won't write it here, but it rhymes with bee-lard).

Thank you so much for recognizing what so many of us already know: that the R-word is vulgar, cruel, unnecessary and truly obscene. Keep on bleeping!

Love,

A grateful special-needs mom