America The Humorless
What we can see or experience in this country is being regulated by the four little old ladies who tell the newspaper they're canceling their subscription or 400 churchgoers who've been told to join a campaign of complaint. Fearful newspaper editors and TV station managers fearful of a massive fine from the FCC (and with huge amounts of money at stake, who can blame them?) pull content, or pull punches, even before the compaints come in, in what they're willing to allow.

Often, the thinking behind this is "What about the chilllldren?!" My thinking: Parent your own damn brats; don't expect the government to do it, and certainly don't parent me, too, by controlling what I can and cannot see. If you don't like the newspaper content, don't buy the newspaper. And if certain TV channels show stuff that disturbs you; well, change the channel, or throw away your TV.

But, think about something for a moment: What's the big deal about showing a little skin?

At the moment the silliest furor is over Tempe, Arizona waitresses dressed as naughty nurses...who are, naturally, getting the real nurses' panties in a wad...all the way to the Arizona attorney general's office. From an AP story:

The Heart Attack Grill — a theme restaurant whose specialties include the Quadruple Bypass Burger and Flatliner Fries, cooked in pure lard — is making health-care professionals’ blood pressure rise, and not because of the menu.

It is because of the waitresses’ naughty nurse uniforms.

The waitresses wear skimpy, cleavage-baring outfits, high heels and thigh-high stockings — a male fantasy that some nursing organizations say is an insult to the profession.

Several nurses have complained to the Arizona attorney general’s office, and a national nursing group has repeatedly asked Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso to stop using the outfits.

“Nurses are the most sexually fantasized-about profession,” said Sandy Summers, executive director of the Center for Nursing Advocacy, based in Baltimore. “We’re asking people, if they’re going to have these fantasies, please don’t make it so public. Move these sexual fantasies to other professions.”

Basso shrugs off Summers’ complaints, and refers to her and her supporters as prudes, cranks and lunatics.

“If anything, I think it glorifies nurses to be thought of as a physically attractive and desirable individual,” Basso said. “There’s a Faye Dunaway, Florence Nightingale hipness to it. Nobody wants to think of themselves as some old battle ax who changes bedpans for a living.”

The most serious complaint Basso has faced was made to the Arizona attorney general’s office by the state Board of Nursing. In September, the attorney general’s office wrote Basso a letter informing him that he is illegally using the word “nurse” at his restaurant and on his Web site. Citing Arizona Statute A.R.S. 32-1636, the attorney general said only someone who has a valid nursing license can use the title “nurse.”

Basso refused to remove “nurse” from his Web site but inserted an asterisk next to every nurse reference and included the following disclaimer:

“The use of the word ‘nurse’ above is only intended as a parody. None of the women pictured on our Web site actually have any medical training, nor do they attempt to provide any real medical services. It should be made clear that the Heart Attack Grill and its employees do NOT offer any therapeutic treatments (aside from laughter) whatsoever.”

Oh. Please. Hellooo, Overlawyered! If the guy was going to be forced into putting in a disclaimer, I wish he'd at least started it, "Hey, humorless asswits..."

And, the Arizona attorney general, for his part in this -- for doing anything more than laughing at the angry nurses -- should be tied up in the center of some mall, and Fluffernuttered and feathered, then left there to be laughed at by anyone passing by who isn't humorously dead yet.

While we're at it, let's contrast the silly uproar in America (again, from women) over a woman showing some skin in a legal publication...

...with the ad that I spotted in the Italian daily newspaper, Corriere Della Serra:

As far as I can see, in the wake of this newsprint show of titty, Italy is not burning, and its residents are not rioting in the streets and holding orgies. If anything, the parts of Europe where nudity is shown seem sexually healthier. In fact, they even have fewer abortions in the really "loose" European countries -- the ones where they don't kid themselves, based on senseless religious doctrine, that lecturing kids in "abstinence only" makes an iota of sense. From the 2005 Guttmacher Report:

...The U.S. abortion rate remains among the highest of all industrialized nations—more than twice as high, for example, as the Netherlands (nine per 1,000 women of reproductive age). There, unlike here, government and social institutions support comprehensive sex education and health care services aimed at helping people, including young people, avoid unintended pregnancy and disease; contraceptive use is widely encouraged and contraceptives are easily available; and national health insurance helps ensure that people have access to timely and affordable care. In short, the abortion rate in the Netherlands—and in other western and northern European countries—is low because unintended pregnancy rates are extremely low due to widespread and effective contraceptive use.

Oh, and P.S. if nudity in Italian culture is as accepted as this ad in the biz section makes it seem, I'd imagine the Italians have the same problem we do getting "young people" to read the newspaper.

Here in America, on the other hand, you have Elmore Leonard being told by The New York Times (in the editing process on his serial, "Comfort To The Enemy," which ran in the Magazine), that he can't say "get laid" in the paper. And Dan Neil, the LA Times' auto columnist, being told he's not allowed to say "Do me!" And my editor at Creators Syndicate has to put a "language advisory" on my column (to notify the daily paper editors who aren't too gutless to run it) whenever I use a word like "butt."

Pretty pathetic, humorless, puritanical country we're having here, huh?