Explain This Please (Warning Explicit Content)

All right, I guess I did have enough in me to write a short piece inspired by something a friend was recently telling me.  My problem is with the content of TV shows.  How is it okay for Law and Order to vividly describe violent rape of children including likes like "tearing her vagina to shreds" and "jamming a mop handle into her vagina until her uterus bled" and other horrible things, ALL ON NETWORK TELEVISION, but words like "shit" are wholly unacceptable?  I'm not a prude or anything, I just don't like to watch that stuff anymore because it makes me too sad.  Having met and gotten to know many survivors/victims of abuse, it just isn't the same. 

I feel the same way, Elliot.

But my issue is with the presentation of the content.  Do you see what I'm getting at here?  Is the sight of a nipple or bare buttocks WORSE and more socially destructive than an explicit description of the rape and murder of a young child while some evil character looks on with wide, gleeful eyes at the crying parents?  I really don't think so.  It's an issue that's the central theme of the South Park movie where Americans are outraged at "naughty words" but are completely fine with violence and death, even enthusiastic about it.

The news media can (but doesn't often) show the bloody aftermath of car bombs, suicide attacks, military engagements, and the like.  Yet they would be fined for using "inappropriate language" or showing a nude person.  It just seems insane to me to have such a backwards standard.  No one, I think, can make the case that a naked human is going to be more traumatic to me or anyone else than hearing 10 minutes of a woman talking about how she was gang raped.  Even those who say "it's for the children," I don't see how they can make this argument in a useful way.

That being said, of course I know I can change the channel.  I already said I do.  Yet these standards apply to any broadcast in the USA.  The rules set up by the FCC aren't probably understood to anyone but a lawyer, and those guys are f@&*kers.  What?  I said they're f@&*kers.  Oh G*d, they've c*me for me!  Nipples never hurt anyone.  I don't see why institutionalized shame has to be perpetuated about the human body and taboo words.  They evolved for a reason and serve a function in all languages, why can't they be used in an appropriate context in a program?  Why is it okay to continue feeding society's hunger for more violence and depravity, but we can't use the "wrong" words oh no!

I doubt anything will ever change (moving at the speed of government) but someday in the future it'd be nice to hear a more realistic line in an episode of Law and Order: San Angeles like, "Yeah it fucking hurt when he obliterated my womb with a shit-ton of TNT, that abortion doctor was a cunt." 

You're under arrest for violating a woman with the three seashells.