[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 141 (Monday, October 18, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H10157]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. NETHERCUTT. Mr. Speaker, like no other creatures on Earth, human 
beings have the unique ability to communicate through language. We can 
communicate feelings of love or hope or anxiety or suspense or 
excitement, all conveying feelings of emotions, feelings of concern. We 
do that through language. We use the English language and all the other 
languages of the world which are spoken through human beings who try to 
convey those feeling accordingly.
  We have over the years respected great writers like Shakespeare and 
people in politics like Lincoln and Kennedy and the poetry of Robert 
Frost, and the magic word of Byron and Keats and Shelley as poets. 
George Will in today's world is a master of the word, of speaking 
effectively and carefully and with great meaning.

                              {time}  2000

  The reason I mention this today, Mr. Speaker, is that over the years 
I think we have seen a reduction in the respect for the English 
language and what words mean, how grammar is expressed or not 
expressed, whether it is proper or not. And just last Thursday we saw, 
on CBS television, a new low in expression for millions of people to 
see and observe and listen to on national television.
  There was a show called Chicago Hope, and there was a headline in USA 
Today following that show entitled Chicago Hope Breaks the Barrier. 
Well, this is the barrier that Chicago Hope broke. It was the barrier 
of obscenity and foul language that I think we have not seen in any 
time in our history on television, on network television.
  The actor involved, Mark Harmon, plays a doctor, apparently, and he 
was before a medical review board to explain why a promising teenage 
baseball pitcher had to have his arm amputated, the story says, when an 
infection set in and, following a series of operations, was unable to 
play, apparently. So this doctor on television, a revered profession in 
our society, by the way, said ``blank happens.'' The USA article says, 
``Blank happens,'' Harmon said, using an epithet for excrement. Neither 
a CBS spokesman nor Henry Bromwell, executive producer of the series, 
could remember a time when censors had allowed the word to be used. 
``It's nothing I haven't tried a couple of times before, except this 
time I won, Bromwell said.''
  Apparently the word was expected to be used for artistic 
truthfulness. Well, Mr. Speaker, I think the American public has, I 
hope, had a bit of enough about artistic expression on national 
television with a captive audience that breaks new barriers, not new 
high barriers but new low barriers. What a distinction for CBS 
television. How proud they must be that this barrier has now been 
reduced even lower. The standards for conduct, for language, for 
propriety, for dignity, for expression has now reached a new low for 
CBS and this so-called entertainment show.
  Now, it is one thing to pay money and go to the movies and watch 
trash, which there is plenty of in today's society. If individuals want 
to do that, people have the right in a free society to do that. But on 
national television, before a national audience, to somehow be proud of 
the breaking of this new low barrier, I fear, says volumes about 
television today and the entertainment industry.
  Are there no bounds in the entertainment industry on television? I 
suspect there may not be, as these new lows keep being reached by 
people who are somehow proud of this low-class artistic expression as 
defined by some producer who feels that he is somehow trying to make 
his mark. He has made his mark all right. He has made a low mark.
  I would urge Americans who are disgusted with this kind of language 
and the lowness of it and the failure of the language to be expressive 
in a dignified and acceptable societal way to write CBS News and give 
them all that they can express about their disapproval for this kind of 
activity.

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