Aw Nuts, Jesse Jackson, You Can't Say That On Television!

Can you say "nuts" on television? More specifically, can you report on remarks made about the nuts of another person, when those remarks were made by a newsmaker in to an open microphone about a presidential candidate?

I guess not, given how cagey the press has been about the recently-released remarks by Jesse Jackson about what, exactly, he'd like to do to Barack Obama. ("I wanna cut his nuts off," is what Jackson so charmingly said.) Not that you'd know it by the reporting — according to Andrea Mitchell on "NBC Nightly News" they were "very crude remarks" but apparently destined to be mysterious; CNN's Campbell Brown also called them "crude" and also "a bit vulgar, so we can't repeat all of it on TV." She then lobbed it to Joe Johns for explanation, who clarified this way: "Well, Campbell, he talked basically about cutting off a part of Barack Obama's anatomy, but we don't want to go there." Even if Jesse Jackson does!

How else is the media squeamish? Howard Mortman counts the ways: WaPo went clinical ("crude language to suggest that he wanted to castrate the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee"); the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page was poetic ("twin objects of male anatomy"); CNN's Don Lemon was confused ("it's to the effect that Barack Obama was cutting off his manhood with black people, or genitals, or something").

But Greg Mitchell evidently saw another program on CNN, because he got the full Monty: "See, Barack's been talking down to black people ... I want to cut his nuts off." Either way, I wasn't the only person to notice that the media had gotten a little bashful here.

Is America strong enough to handle the violent wishes of Jesse Jackson toward Barack Obama's pair? Probably — last I checked, "nuts" wasn't one of George Carlin's 7 words, though certainly news outlets try to be a mite decorous when addressing the nether regions of presidential candidates. Then again, it's interesting to note how many references to the Hillary Nutcracker went by unchecked (see this WaPo story; also, it was the inspiration for Tucker Carlson's now-infamous comment about how his legs react to her voice).

So it's okay to talk about nuts if they are on someone other than a presidential candidate? Or, nuts are off limits but references to Hillary Clinton's steel-plated thighs are okay? I don't have the answer, but then again, it doesn't seem anyone else does, either. If you think that's crazy, well then, you're probably just nuts.

Update: Congrats to the LAT on its, well, balls — with a minimum of drama, they printed Jackson's comment. "'I want to cut his nuts off,' Jackson said, making a jabbing gesture with his hand." The NYT can claim no such pair, says the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who was bemused about the NYT's "story about a controversy concerning Jesse Jackson's words that refuses to print the most relevant word." Yeah, it's pretty nuts.

p.s. Also, just a note: Wow, was radio host Warren Ballantine drowning in his spin last night on Election Center. Check it out here.

Making A Mountain Out Of A Mohel [Extreme Mortman]
Greg Mitchell: "Nuts" Case: How Media Handled Jackson's "Crude" Word [HuffPo]

Video!
Cable news anchors choking on Jesse Jackson's "nuts" [236]

Comments

[Decipherer]

What is as disquieting about Jackson's "irreverent" threat to castrate Obama was that quick and deft hand gesture he made right at the end of making it, along with a little jaw clench for emphasis.

From that, once might conclude that the reverend seems to have been practiced at the "art" of political castration. Won't work this time, Jesse.

[larry278]

Wouldn't it be crude to dismiss Pastor Jackson as being mucking futs?

[ssb752]

MSM has given this patently stupid & bar room comment only a minor run. Imagine (and it doesn't take much) if this comment had been direct at the presumptive Repub. candidate? OMG, an uproar of Mt. Vesuvius proportions! (Obama campaign must have put him up to it!) The meer questioning of the qualifications of a former POW brings out the wrath of the pundits and the questioning of one's "patriotism."
MSM = Huge Corporations = Bush = McCain. Duh.

[catfood]

Would a phrase like "dangling man-berries" have made it past the noses of the ever-vigilant Fox News censors?

By bleeping it I suspect they wanted to suggest (to their suggestible viewers) that Jackson uttered something much worse than what he actually said.

[mediamarv]

Jackson violated a basic tenant of media training: Alway assume the mic is open, the camera is rolling and that print reporters in your office can read upside down.
He should know better.

I love the way the story makes the MSM squirm, tho.... they still have a fictional mental image of their audiences which bears no resemblance to reality.

IOW, they all suck.

Please quote me.

[brandon102]

A little different perspective: Could it be that Jesse intentionally used the word "nuts" as a viral plea to Congress to see if they can't find one single pair among all the members of the House and Senate?

I suspect he is aware of Obama's offensive FISA vote. Stranger things have happened. The truth is out there, or down there, as the case may be.

[BigBen]

Castration was one of the tools of the KKK. If a white person eg Bill Clinton had said that there would be uproar in the black and liberal left wing community but not a word of protest when the Rev. says it.
What a bunch of hypocrites we are.When I remember how quickly we manned the barricades against the racist Clintons.Now we go arm in arm with them to unify the party.And them such racists.

[StrayTalk]

Listened to the BBC on my public radio station yesterday. They quoted Jackson directly with no bleeping or euphemisms used. Most U.S MSM is cotton candy for the mind.

[truthyguy]

I may have missed it, but I doubt it - NO ONE HAS DISCUSSED THE DISTINCT POSSIBILITY (PROBABILITY) THAT FOX PURPOSELY HAD THE MICROPHONES OPEN IN ORDER TO CATCH JACKSON MAKING SOME SORT OF EMBARRASSING COMMENT WHEN HE THOUGHT IT WAS OFF THE RECORD. Fox never expected to get what they did but they sure hit gold with what they got.

[rbdc]

Nuts to all the networks! Like we don't see and hear far more suggestive (although not as disturbing) stuff in prime time on the regular networks all the time. And wasn't it all over the TV news more than a decade ago when Madeline Albright at the UN spoke of cojones or lack thereof in reference to Cuban pilots? And although my memory's a bit stretched with this one, I believe it was Nelson Rockefeller who testified to Congress at his VP confirmation hearing about someone having someone else by the balls/nuts/cojones (actually, I believe it was just balls; somebody correct me if I'm wrong on this one) -- again all over the TV.

[Marshall Lucky]

The word "n uts" isn't considered bad for TV unless it refers to reproductive organs. Otherwise, Planters wouldn't be allowed to advertise.

[5150]

wingnuts hahaha
Salted Nuts teeheehee
BRAZIL NUTS HaHahahehe he shoots he scores

injokes from the staff at the funny farm

[gulopartisan]

What this story seems to miss the point on is the obsession with testicles, call them what you like. Jackson's remark was not just crude, it was an ugly thought representing an ugly mind, like Carville's bubbling effusively about Hillary having three "cojones" to Obama's -- whatever the sado-homoerotic math was. Those of us who have never expressed our anger by thinking, "I'd like to cut his testicles off" are wondering who these people are. They do not seem that different from husbands who think of their wives as "that c*nt." When I get a glimpse of this kind of mind, I stop listening. When somebody says to me that he'd like to "rip so-and-so a new one," I don't have to ask, "new what?" before deciding that what I'm hearing is the petty rage of an ugly mind... typically belonging to a coward who would no more "rip a new one" for anyone not tied up than he would volunteer to rape a polar bear or teabag a mandrill.

[javagirl322]

Thank you...very well said!!

[truth101]

FINALLY someone addresses what happened here with a little
insight and a little reflection -- really a gigantic cut above the
standard reporting. KEEP IT UP the next 5 months are going
to be bumpy ride....