Television Censors are Morons

I'm not talking about editing Casino or Goodfellas so that tense scenes become comedy with all the profanity bleeped out ("Freak you Sam Rothstein, freak you!").  I'm talking about content edits that call into question the morality of the censors.  I present two exhibits for your approval:

#1: The Godfather on Spike TV.  When I watched this film, it was advertised as "unedited."  And for the most part, it was: all the violence and profanity was present.  Except for one thing.  On Michael and Apollonia's wedding night, right as she's taking off her shirt, the TV blurs her breasts out.

So let me tell you what the network has just told us: you can show two men being slowly strangled, a man being shot in the eye, a man being riddled with two hundred bullets, a guy shooting two other guys in the head, many persons being killed in gruesome manners at the same time as a baptism, a man beating his pregnant wife, and a man waking up with a bloody severed horse's head in his bed, but you can't show a woman taking off her shirt in front of her husband.  So, are woman's breasts the most evil thing we can see?  Gosh, I don't know how they expect 51% of the population to go their whole lives without looking down.  It's ridiculous.  Everybody's nude sometimes, and it's perfectly harmless and natural, but not everyone partakes in violence, which is damaging for reasons I hope I don't have to lay out.  Would they rather people strangled others instead of seeing others nude?  I think Spike needs to set its priorities straight.

But even better is #2: Apocalypse Now Redux on Bravo.  You know, some films just shouldn't be on cable.  I knew it would be butchered like the cow in that film, so I watched parts of it just to see how bad it got.  Every single profanity, mild and strong, was gone, as was the nudity.  Then, right at the end, Marlon Brando says, "We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it's obscene."  Of course, Bravo edited out the word you'd think they'd edit out, even though in this context, it's not even swearing: it's merely stating a word.  They then proceed to show the rest of the scene uncut--Brando being hacked to death by Martin Sheen, and a real water buffalo being slaughtered by a real tribe for their real ritual.  Unstaged violence, real carnage.  When it was over, Bravo started it again and showed Martin Sheen punching the mirror unedited.  Real blood, people.

Thank you very much, Bravo.  You just proved Kurtz's point.