Fox Saves America From Silent Dirty Words, Blasphemy, And Fornication Talk At The Emmys

We’re still (pretty unsuccessfully) trying to shake off our Emmys hangover – drinking was really the only way to make it through all three-plus hours of last night’s telecast without going insane from boredom – but we’re now lucid enough to tackle the “mystery” of that trio of perplexing cuts (compiled in the above clip) from Ray Romano, Katherine “If You Call Me Hi-Jel I Will Fucking Cut You” Heigl, and Sally Field to the giant, profanity-erasing Sphere of Censorship hanging in the rafters of the Shrine. As today’s THR notes, it was a Fox censor’s itchy dump-button finger that triggered the jarring cuts, an attempt to avoid the post-Nipplegate wrath of the FCC for airing Romano’s joke that “Frasier’s screwing my wife,” Heigl’s silent mouthing of the word “shit” to express surprise that she’d actually won, and Field’s taking of the Lord’s name in vain (”goddamn”). We applaud the network’s efforts to expunge these adulterous, scatological, and blasphemous references from the show, sparing millions of TV viewers – even the lip-readers! – from a potentially ugly controversy like the Jesus Can Suck It Incident that marred the Creative Arts Emmys earlier in the week.

• Fox steer clear of utter disaster [THR]